Team of Wingate students impresses during Truist innovation event

By Chuck Gordon

Faced with a tight deadline but armed with creativity and initiative, 15 Wingate University students put Atrium Health on track to solve a vexing HR problem last week.

Taking part in the Charlotte Immersive Innovation Event at the Truist Innovation Center in uptown Charlotte, the students assessed Atrium's problem, designed a solution, showed how it could be implemented, and then presented their solution, all in six hours.

"It was energizing," says Jay Landi, a sophomore from Chicago double-majoring in finance and mathematics. "We only have a day to do this? Can we create something that's valuable? Can we create something that makes Atrium happy in this one day?"

By all accounts they did. The problem Atrium presented was a real one: How to enhance the talent pipeline for nonclinical jobs in the healthcare field. The Wingate students came up with an AI-assisted digital platform that walks a prospective employee through the process of discovering their own interests and skills and then matches them up with potential career paths with the healthcare provider, sort of like an AI career counselor focused on healthcare.

The students named their AI platform "B.O.L.D." (Building Opportunities, Leading Discovery), and "bold" certainly describes their approach to problem-solving. After a Thursday-night introductory session and networking event attended by all six university teams that participated in the event, several Wingate team members went back to campus and huddled in a dorm room among half-empty pizza boxes, laptops open, to brainstorm solutions to Atrium's problem.

They came in the next day with a PowerPoint ready to go. "We didn't want to spend the entire day figuring out where to begin," Landi says.

Their initiative didn't go unnoticed.

"Their maturity, their forward thinking, their presentation skills, their confidence - just from start to finish, I felt like they were in a field of their own," says Bianca Stover, director, HR business partner, with Atrium.

On Friday, the Wingate team split up into subgroups - product development, marketing strategy, and client alignment - and got to work. "There were so many things to do that everyone was able to find something and work at it," Landi says.

On hand to help develop the team's prototype were representatives from tech companies Microsoft and Infosys, as well as Steve Shank, Wingate's vice president of information technology and chief information officer. A design expert from Truist also lent a hand.

Truist had held similar events in years past, but only with UNC Charlotte students. This year the financial institution opened it up to student teams from four other area schools: Davidson College, Appalachian State University, Johnson C. Smith University, Queens University and Wingate. Each worked on a problem presented by its own partner organization.

From a field of close to 50 students nominated by faculty members, three Wingate staff members - Kacey Grantham, senior vice president for career pathways; Dr. Terese Lund, associate vice provost for purposeful pathways; and Dr. Mary Jordan, director of career services - selected 15 students majoring in a variety of fields: math, business, biology, chemistry, psychology.

Serin Kim, a senior marketing major from Georgia, says she appreciated gaining experience doing real-world, hands-on problem solving on a tight deadline.

"It's a learning experience for sure," she says, "because in the real world, every project comes with a timeline and a deadline."

"In those six hours we had to figure out what the product was to a meaningful detail, figure out a solution for the problem, develop that solution, and then implement that solution," Landi says. "Those things could take two years for a company."

Stover was so impressed that she's trying to get the Wingate students in front of Atrium executives to present their prototype.

Grantham says experiences like the Truist event are extremely useful for students in a world in which internships are in short supply. She was impressed with how much the students got out of the experience.

"To be honest, I had pretty high expectations, and it beat my expectations," Grantham says. "Across the country, there's half as many internships as there are students who need them, and so we've got to create micro-experiences like this that give students a chance to dip their toe in the water."

"It was the kind of experience that I wish we had again next week," Landi says.

Oct. 22, 2025