After stints in various segments of personal banking, business banking, commercial banking and wealth management across a number of banking institutions. I decided that a postgraduate business degree was the means needed to send a strong signal about the strength of my candidacy for any future leadership position I wanted to go for.

Aside from the evidence of the  trade statistics, my previous roles gave me the opportunity to interact with a wide number of people from different parts of the world, and it was evident to me that Asia had arrived on the big stage in economic terms. With so much influence that Asia has on monetary and trade flows, it is hard to ignore the value of an Asian education experience. Hong Kong’s geographical proximity to Mainland China, food culture, pace of life, living standards, and the attitudes of the people were points that I had considered before shortlisting B-schools. Of course the short travel times back to Singapore mattered too!

After selecting the destination, picking the institution was easy. HKU’s reputation in the higher education field makes it a prime destination, and although the faculty is not as old as the other established faculties of the university, it has risen comparatively fast in terms of performance and rankings, in addition to its strong comparison with the other education giants that HKU competes with. I consider myself bilingual, culturally sensitive, commercially savvy and emotionally matured and I wanted an education to upscale my leadership skills in preparation for managerial work across business development and trading. Touting a robust and thorough curriculum, with Fudan as its partner university, gave me the confidence that my HKU MBA journey would allow me to upgrade myself and put me in a good spot to compete in an ever growing Asia.

The class spent a month in Beijing for a cultural immersion before beginning lessons proper. It has been two months since then and I am enjoying my classroom-seminar type sittings and  the exchange of ideas and communication styles of various classmates. The pedagogic approach taken towards case studies, assignments and readings are atypical of an MBA approach where you’re placed in a pressure cooker and expected to deliver. It’s been a great experience so far and I’m learning as I go along.