The Negotiation Challenge

Wow! This week our negotiation teams from Naveen Jindal School of Management, UT Dallas will participate in Round Three of The 2025 Negotiation Challenge sponsored by The Negotiation Center.

Last week, one of our teams had a negotiation with our sister school, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) School of Law. It was a meeting of the Jindals.

To date our UTD negotiators have faced teams from New Zealand, Taiwan, India, and Italy. On Thursday, the UTD students find out their Round Three competitors and arrange their negotiation times on Friday and Saturday.

The The University of Texas at Dallas teams consist of Team 1 MBA Candidate Amanda Jo Masters Candidate Finance Renil Thummar Senior, Business Administration Sales @Dylan Hall Team 2 MBA Candidate Finance Mimi Fitzpatrick Masters Candidate Healthcare Leadership Patti S. Lemons Junior, Supply Change Management Brian Li and Team 3 MBA Candidate Jacob Paulsen, aPHR Masters Candidate Finance Aparna Garg and Senior, Healthcare Management George P Eapen. I’m fortunate to have all nine students in one of my graduate or undergraduate negotiation and dispute resolution classes.

In the competition, there are 180 total students comprising 60 international teams of three. Our students are informed of the negotiation simulation and given their partner teams on Thursday morning. Then, they must coordinate the meeting time and meet before Saturday at 5 pm CST. (Just agreeing to a meeting time across 20 time zones is one of the toughest parts of the negotiation.)

After this week, the teams will learn how they ranked against the other teams. The top 10 teams compete in the finals in Cape Town, South Africa.

Thank you to Maria Hasenhuttl and Erica Lin for helping stage and host the meetings. Appreciation to our JSOM dean Hasan Pirkul who approved our participation. And a shout out to the JSOM Technology & Facilities Services Team for going above and beyond to make sure we connect virtually with the other teams.

Please wish our students luck. Also, they would also appreciate any good deal making tips to represent hashtag#UTD well as they negotiate globally.

Go Negotiate!