Another One in the Books: ICW's 7th Annual Fittest Company Challenge

On October 18, ICW hosted the 7th annual Fittest Company Challenge. The FCC is one of  ICW’s flagship events. Teams from FoxRock, RA Capital, Phillips, Flagship Pioneering, and F Prime competed against one another to win the title of the Fittest Company. The field day style tournament kicked off with a water balloon relay. The rest of the competition consisted of a basketball station, dizzy memory game, heavy sled pull, Turkish get-ups, big tire flipping, and an ICW quiz. All of the teams did great, but RA Capital pulled through and was, for the third year in a row,  crowned the champions of the FCC.

The FCC is one of the most looked forward to events hosted by ICW, along with Fittest in Finance. Many of the teams that participated in the FCC are returning competitors, such as FoxRock and RA Capital. Community and corporate engagement are core parts of the ICW model, and hosting corporate events like the FCC are part of what keep these relationships alive and thriving. 

Michael Gillespie, an investment director at RA Capital and reigning FCC champ said “this is a group of people we don’t get as much interaction with in our day to day lives so it’s really good to get us out of the office and working with some really great people” when asked why it’s important for companies to work with ICW. Having these companies actually come to the gym and see how we operate makes being a supporter much more meaningful.

Connecting with the participants and completing tasks led by them is a great example of another pillar of our model; bridging social capital. Power dynamics are flipped on its head when in the gym, as our participants are the experts here. Maggie Wilson, Director of Operations at FoxRock said “bringing people together across different backgrounds and classes and socioeconomic levels and working out together is such a team building and awesome dynamic.” 

The ICW mission is “hitting on a real unmet need, it’s an underserved group with not as much support as a lot of others”, said Gillespie, “so I think it’s really cool what you’re doing”.