Twenty two senior Business Fellows traveled to Prague, pitching Czech voice tech firm Phonexia on a U.S. market entry strategy.
For their capstone consulting course, 22 Martha and Spencer Love School of Business Fellows exchanged the classroom for Phonexia’s Prague headquarters, refining a U.S. market‑entry strategy they had spent the semester building from the ground up.
“Presenting a U.S. market‑entry plan for Phonexia made everything we’d studied feel real,” said Nathaniel Lerman ’25, an accounting major from Baltimore, Md. “We analyzed the competition, mapped potential partners and showed how their voice‑tech could fit government security needs back home.”
Late‑night rehearsals brought every work stream together. The finance team built three‑year projections from limited data, while others refined competitive analysis and slides.
“When we arrived in Prague, started to organize all of our research, and finally came up with a story to pull it all together, that’s when I started to feel confident in our strategy,” said Ava Fitzgerald ’25, a marketing and international business major from Haddonfield, N.J. “We practiced the presentation countless times, and I got feedback from my peers and our instructor, David Goslin, that was extremely helpful.”
The pace was demanding 12‑hour sessions fueled by fast food and four years of knowing exactly who could handle which task when pressure spiked.
“At the start, it felt like we were pushing a square rock up a hill,” said Eli Gould ’25, a business analytics major from Chicago, Ill. “Once we started writing and applying solid research, the square became a circle and everything moved.”
Work wrapped, the Fellows traded laptops for local culture. A Mozart dinner in Prague’s historic district introduced many to opera for the first time, while Easter‑market stalls and the Jewish Quarter offered souvenirs and quiet reflection.
“Standing on the roof for our group photo, a wave of accomplishment washed over me,” Gould said. “We’d finished a tough project and grown closer as friends.”