When Nazia, a recent postgraduate student at the University of Auckland, signed up for Solve It she couldn’t have imagined it would lead to her getting her dream job interning at the Auckland District Health Board (ADHB). Solve It is a corporate innovation challenge, run by the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where students form teams to solve challenging business problems for New Zealand organisations.

Studying towards a Postgraduate Diploma in Public Health last year, Nazia decided to take part in Solve It because the problem posed by ADHB – How can you solve it for live organ donors? – seemed particularly pertinent to her.

“ADHB’s Solve It challenge seemed enticing to me as a good opportunity to apply the theoretical concepts I have learned in my tertiary education.”

Nazia and her team went on to win the top prize for the ADHB challenge by proposing the creation of a companion booklet and a donor pin that would be sent out to patients after the donation procedure to increase awareness and act as a segue to community support. The team at ADHB were so excited about this idea that they offered her an internship to work on making it a reality.

“My role at ADHB is to progress the project that we came up with during Solve It. They have given me a lot of responsibility which I didn’t expect but it has been awesome. They are trusting that I will reach out to the right people, collate ideas, design the overall look and feel of the booklet and ensure that the project progresses.

“This entire experience still feels too good to be true. I thought that the first few years out of university I would have to work my way up to get into a job that I actually enjoy and am passionate about. Working on design concepts has always been a hobby of mine, but I never thought I could use those skills in conjunction with my health science degree in my actual job.”

Nazia highly recommends that other students take the opportunity to be part of Solve It and other programmes like it run by the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

“Solve It is an awesome opportunity to expand yourself and learn about something that’s not directly related to your degree. It has also given me access to so many opportunities I didn’t even known were out there. Above all I have made some incredible friends and even met my new flatmate through Solve It!”
“Over the last four years New Zealand organisations have embraced the concept of working with young talent and smart minds in an effort to collectively solve large scale problems,” says Associate Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Trudi Gwillim.

“Solve It offers the perfect collaboration between university and industry, it’s a delight to watch students and organisations share knowledge, learn from each other, create solutions and have a whole lot of fun in the process.”

Solve It will run again in September 2019. If you are interested in getting involved as a sponsor and engaging students to create solutions to a problem that your organisation needs help with, contact t.gwillim@auckland.ac.nz to find out more.

Nazia Ahmed
Postgraduate Diploma in Public Health and a Bachelor of Health Sciences