Project Overview: Fall 2025

This semester, our teams have partnered with organizations across industries—from startups to Fortune 500 companies—to deliver meaningful insights and strategic recommendations. Here’s a look at some of the exciting work our members have been doing.

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Project 67 (Canva)

Our team is working with Canva to strengthen post-graduation retention and improve the user journey for students transitioning out of the Canva for Campus ecosystem. We’ve mapped the current student lifecycle, analyzed friction points in feature adoption, and conducted interviews with students, educators, and administrators to identify high-impact opportunities for long-term engagement. Following our intermediate deliverable which covered user behavior, competitive benchmarking, and key transition triggers, we are now developing targeted recommendations across product, marketing, and AI features to help Canva convert student users into lifelong subscribers.

PMs: Kylee Hamamoto and Miffy Wang

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Project GTA6 (Lyft) 

Our team is working with Lyft Inc. to develop a comprehensive B2B2C strategy aimed at strengthening their university partnerships and increasing rideshare adoption among college students. We have successfully completed the market landscape research (Phase 1) and negotiated an in-person final deliverable in NYC to present our actionable frameworks and -- for the first time -- a customized sales toolkit for Lyft to use for pitching universities. For a team activity, we'll be competing in a highly anticipated paintball challenge against the Turkish Airlines project team (among others) soon! 

PMs: Aaron Combs and Pranaya Balaji 

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Project Dome Daddy (Turkish Airlines)

Project Dome Daddy is YUCG’s second engagement with Turkish Airlines, the worldwide leader in number of countries served. This project aims to solve three questions: (1) What are other popular airport hubs in Eurasia doing successfully that Turkish could encourage Istanbul Airport to implement? (Literature review) (2) Why does Canada proportionally send more tourists per capita to Istanbul than the United States? (Survey, statistical analysis) and (3) How could Turkish Airlines go about convincing United and Delta to re-open direct routes to Istanbul, which would greatly increase overall market size? (Interviews) 

Question 1 was answered with the intermediate deliverable, and we now aim to answer questions 2 and 3 before the final deliverable, which will be presented in-person at Turkish Airlines’ Istanbul headquarters! 

PM: Atharv Joshi

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Project For The People (New Haven)

Project For The People is working with the City of New Haven to implement a new Microsoft 365 Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system into their department functions. The new CRM platform is intended to centralize data, improve communication between departments, and enhance the City’s ability to engage with residents, businesses, and community partners. However, the City currently lacks the internal capacity and specialized expertise required to manage the technical and organizational aspects of such an initiative. Project For The People is working closely with City officials to develop an implementation approach that aligns with departmental needs, promotes data consistency, and supports long-term sustainability of the system. Currently, Project For The People is  meeting with the heads of departments of New Haven, including Housing, Commission on Equal Opportunity, and Small Contractor Development to identify and solve their problems in implementing and consistently using this new system. Project aside, they are expecting a dinner at South Bay Mediterranean Kitchen and a paintball day for squad bonding!

PM: Daniel Jung

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Project Pulse

Project Pulse is a Fortune 500 biopharmaceutical company developing treatments that impact millions worldwide. Our team is supporting them in identifying strategies to increase Gen Z screening for Type 1 Diabetes. So far, we’ve completed comprehensive secondary research, conducted 40 interviews with Yale students, and 6 expert interviews with faculty at the Yale School of Public Health. As we move toward our final deliverable, we’re excited to launch a survey to deepen our understanding of Gen Z attitudes and behaviors around early screening. 

PM: Megha Kumar

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Project Touch Grass

Project Touch Grass is a collaboration with a Canadian consumer electronics accessories company known for its precision-cut skins and hardware customization products. YUCG is partnering with this company to reimagine both the customer experience and the backend systems that power its skins business, ranging from the D2C ordering flow to production operations and systems integration. So far, the team has completed extensive journey mapping, operational diagnostics, and user research to inform early design and process recommendations. Highlights include an onsite trip to Toronto to inspect production workflows and meet with their operations team in person.

PMs: Mark Akladious and Wei Lun Lee