Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: Stanford University

Title of entry: The Five Women of the Class of '72 Look Back

About this entry: In 1971, only five of Stanford GSB’s 308 first-year MBA students were women. The summer after their first year, three of those women used slides and reel-to-reel tape to create a provocative “we belong here” presentation that got everyone’s attention.

After rediscovering the 50-year-old presentation, we took a deep dive into this story through a multi-channel package, including a video and accompanying story, a longer magazine feature story (both print and digital), an Instagram story with audio and original photos, and posts on all of our social media profiles.

The 8-minute video includes the three classmates reconnecting and reminiscing today about their experiences at the GSB, alongside original audio and video from the 1971 presentation. The feature story provides more context and room for their stories, and brings in the other two women from the class, including one of the first Black women to attend the school.

While this story spoke directly to our alumni, it had much broader reach, appealing to prospective students, and our wider audiences. The video and story were used by our alumni relations team and the admissions teams as part of their content marketing efforts, and we also found the story to have a strong response in our biweekly insights newsletter.