Angela Tai

I graduated from Hong Kong University’s Full-time MBA Programme in 2018. During my time as a student here I had the opportunity to intern at Pearson Education Asia, where I worked as a Corporate Venture Lead from March to November of 2018. This encompassed many things. Namely, I was responsible for planning, prototyping and piloting internal Ed-Tech ventures housed by Pearson’s Tomorrow’s Market Incubator; a corporate level initiative set up to drive new market opportunities globally.

The lessons I learned during my eight month internship at Pearson Education Asia were invaluable. I facilitated cross-functioning team communication of the company’s colleagues and vendors across Beijing, Hong Kong, UK and the US. Not only this, but I also conducted thorough in-field research on the industry, target market and competitor landscape, and developed a detailed yet agile product prototype and pedagogy system as well as go-to-market plan for China’s markets. I successfully initiated this project and secured funding for rapid prototyping and testing, and am extremely proud to say that the aforementioned project was reabsorbed into Pearson Education Asia’s business units.

My internship experience equipped me for my current role in a number of ways. It provided me with a thorough understanding of the respective industry’s historical, current and future trends. It gave me a better understanding of Pearson Education Asia and its business initiatives, and how they could be applied elsewhere. Finally, it taught me how to utilise cultural understanding and a business mindset to successfully convince major stakeholders and decision makers. All of these key skills have been extremely useful to me in my most recent career endeavours.

My MBA experience at Hong Kong University not only gave me great exposure to opportunities, but also helped me gain knowledge in specific business areas and build an understanding of how to conduct business across different countries and cultures. The career services team at HKU – specifically the networking events they held and the alumni recommendations I was provided with – were a great help with my overall internship experience.