Finally, to networking!

During these past two weeks, I have begun the second component of the Ted Wang fellowship: meeting with local Shanghainese professionals and getting to know more about their career paths and industries.  I’m especially eager to meet with Wellesley alums and learn how they transformed a Wellesley diploma into a career.

All of which leads me to my first meeting with a Wellesley alum who wished not to be publicly identified by name, but who works as an entrepreneur in Shanghai.  She and I met for brunch one day and talked about her experiences starting and leading her own company.  The unpredictability of the consumer market and policy changes add to the already heavy workload and travel responsibilities of a CEO, she reported.  At the same time, she believes in her products’ potential and aims for further development in the coming months.  Our conversation took many fascinating turns-from the Chinese economy to personal family history to the film industry-and I’m honored she took time out of her busy schedule to meet with me.   I also gained even deeper respect for anyone launching a start-up.

For my second and third networking meetings, I visited the offices of MindSpan Development, a Shanghai-based executive coaching company where I interned two summers ago.  In addition to catching up with old colleagues, I spoke at great length with MindSpan’s CEO Gary Wang, who informed me about a new project designed to spread the benefits of executive coaching to a wider audience.  (For those like pre-intern me who aren’t familiar with executive coaching, it’s when a top-level executive consults with a trained coach through workshops or individual sessions to learn how to improve their business performance and/or managerial skills).

Gary Wang and me

Mindspan staff and me

MindSpan’s project is a new app/social media portal which will provide virtual access to many coaching workshops and videos as well as English and Chinese written materials from well-known coaches.  Gary believes that this new app addresses China’s lack of internal product innovation, which prevents China from moving up the value-chain in the global economy.  By providing low-cost coaching resources, MindSpan aims to help individual workers improve their leadership skills/business impact and add new momentum into the economy.

After talking to Gary about the project, I met with one of Mindspan’s new business partners, Winston Wang, a longtime managing director of Intersport-Asia Pacific.  Winston has worked in the international retail and supply-chain industry for nearly three decades and we shared a fascinating conversation about his career.  Despite graduating college in China during the heyday of state-owned enterprises, Winston turned down the mainstream SOE career path and  decided to do his own thing.  For his first job, he worked for Jingjiang hotels, one of the first foreign venture companies in China in the hotel business.  After working there for a while, he moved to Jardine Matheson, a retail conglomerate, and worked in the supply chain side of their dairy farm subsidiary during the time Matheson’s business made up 1/3 of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. (Can you imagine?  Those must have been the days).

Sources: businesstraveller.com, wikipedia

After three decades working retail/supply-chain, Winston has developed a distinct philosophy about work.  He believes in the importance of choice.  Even a small, economic choice (such as which job to take) will influence your social beliefs (do I believe in this company/industry) and then your spiritual beliefs (what do I want to do with my life)?  I appreciated his analysis, and I feel like a similar thought process could help me as I make big decisions later on in life.

Me explaining something to a prospective parent

BISS Puxi Recruitment Team!

One last note besides the three networking meetings: the Wellesley alum group has been participating in college recruitment fairs around Shanghai and I volunteered at one at the British International School of Shanghai (BISS) in Puxi.  The event was such a throwback to all the college fairs in high school with dozens of tables decked out in school colors, flanked by friendly representatives with flashy brochures.  Except this time, I was one of the reps, too.  I had a great time talking about Wellesley to various parents and students, and I got to know some fellow volunteer-Wellesley alums as well.  Who knows, maybe next fall, I will recognize some of the students I talked to!