In January of 2025, Villanovans returned to campus for the start of a new year and a new semester.
However, instead of adjusting back to campus, six students flew to Switzerland to join more than 3,000 people and more than 800 companies at the World Economic Forum.
They took off on Sunday, January 19 and returned a week later on Sunday, January 26. The conference officially took place from Monday through Friday in Davos, a small ski town in the Swiss Alps.
Villanova was one of two American universities that sent undergraduates to this conference, the other university being the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Four of the participating students were members of the Villanova Entrepreneurship Society (VES), and the remaining two were members of the International Business Society (IBS).
The participants included senior Events Chair Teddy Fitzsimons, junior Alumni Chair of VES Jugat Singh, sophomore President of VES Hunter Porro, sophomore Vice President of VES Datamis Ghorbanian, sophomore member of IBS Ryaan Jamal and senior member of IBS Santiago Ortiz de Montellano.
The students made up a team with diverse backgrounds and interests. Fitzsimons and Ghorbanian are members of the Villanova College of Engineering. The remaining members are part of the Villanova School of Business.
“Our backgrounds are very very wide in engineering and business,” Ghorbanian said. “It was very good to have. Each conversation our group could go into, because of our wide backgrounds, we were able to talk to different people.”
The conference hosted people from more than 130 countries.
Together, the Villanovans were able to communicate in about 10 languages collectively among the six of them.
The theme of the conference was “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,” in which discussions and panels featured topics surrounding artificial intelligence.
“The main takeaway I had was that these companies were focusing on not having AI necessarily replace people’s jobs, but find a way to make operations more efficient,” Jamal said. “So, I just thought that was an interesting spin to keep in mind. I thought that was, like, a positive outlook.”
Throughout the week, the students had the opportunity to speak with many industry leaders at various venues.
The venues were spread throughout the town, some being in churches, others in shops and some in townhouses.
Each year, the MIT & Forbes Dome takes place in an inflatable dome, making it the conference’s largest venue.
It featured panels, talks, networking opportunities and displayed research with more than 500 CEOs and founders in attendance.
“That was pretty cool, just, ‘cause, I really got to talk to people there,” Fitzsimons said. “Where, other [venues], you sit through an event, and you talk after the event or before, at MIT, you spoke all the way through. I think I made the most connections there. And, the connections I made previously showed up, so I got to talk to them more.”
Axios, Bloomberg and NBC were other large venues in which the group was able to participate.
All of this would not have been possible if not for Fitzsimons’ vision the year prior.
In 2024, Fitzsimons had attended the World Economic Forum to watch his mother speak as a representative of the MIT alumni association. After that, he knew he wanted to internationally expand the Villanova name and bring a group of students the following year.
In the Fall of 2024, Fitzsimons presented his idea at the first VES meeting. From there, interest spread to members of IBS. VES and IBS then worked together to acquire funding from the VSB Deloitte Student Group Fund, which sponsors student professional development opportunities, such as the World Economic Forum.
In addition, the group received funding from University President Rev. Peter M. Donohue, O.S.A., Ph.D.
Fitzsimons then reached out to Mike Federle, the CEO of Forbes, who invited Villanova to the MIT & Forbes Dome invite-only portion of the conference.
The students are excited to apply what they had learned in the conference to their future career endeavors. Some participants reported that they hope this becomes an annual Villanova trip.
“It was great that we were the first round of people to go,” Jamal said. “But, speaking of once-in-a-lifetime, never gonna be surrounded by people like that again. It’s a crazy experience, that if six students from Villanova could experience it every year, that’s phenomenal.”
