Clare Burns has spent several years interviewing business and finance leaders as she investigates Australia’s growing corporate greed culture.

The PhD student has at last count recorded 1400 observations and 260 pages worth of notes from her interviews and research.

The challenge she set herself was to whittle the data down to a concise, three minute analysis as she tackled Griffith University’s annual Three Minute Thesis Competition.

The Griffith Business School student distilled her concepts superbly and was named winner of the 2020 Three Minute Thesis for her presentation; ‘Corporate Sustainability: Holding up a mirror to greedy finance culture’.

Clare impressed the three judges with her engaging manner, well-crafted and logical pitch and most importantly of all, a three minute presentation which proved accessible and understandable.

“The competition was really fierce and what helped me through in the lead-up to the final was that I feel really passionate about the topic and I’m surprised how passionate I keep on becoming,” Clare said.

GBS PhD candidate Clare Burns is the winner of the 2020 Griffith 3MT

A Griffith MBA graduate, Clare decided on taking the plunge and moving to Brisbane to start her studies after many years in corporate consulting .

“I dropped down to 10 percent of what I was earning in order to do the PhD, but you can probably tell that I’m passionate about this and I’m really glad I started that journey”.

Clare recommends other post graduate students look at the challenge of the 3MT if only to gain skills they otherwise wouldn’t be taught.

“Absolutely. And it’s not just because I’ve benefited from this unexpected win. The 3MT process has served as a reflective, refining exercise to concretise my thinking and in the process reinforce why I started the organisational finance culture journey in the first place.”

Clare will now represent Griffith in the upcoming Asia-Pacific 3MT semi finals later this month

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOqB-VDBSi4&t=8s

Finishing second on the judge’s scorecard was Jenny Murfield (Health) for her presentation ‘Supporting the role of a lifetime’ while GBS PhD candidate Mark Teoh was named the People’s Choice winner for his presentation ‘Understanding Transformative Tourism Expereinces in a Cross-Cultural Setting’

GBS PhD candidate Mark Teoh was named People’s Choice Winner at the 3MT