UMW China Centre 10th Anniversary &
Alumni Gala Dinner 2018
Sino-UK Creative Economy Forum

Despite long distance between Kunshan and Shanghai, Michail arrived in time at the UoM China Centre. It was already evening time. We started our interview immediately. Michail came all the way from Greece and it’s been already the fourth year for Michail in China. We wonder the reasons he came to China and study the MBA at the UoM.

I decided to do an MBA because after so many years in a management position, I wanted to refresh and recharge my management knowledge. I wanted to broaden my network to know more people from different industries, and I also wanted to set a good example of continuous improvement to my son.

During my MBA I progressed from senior manager at an SME to vice president at an MNC. The programme opened my eyes to different ways of doing business and I gained new perspectives on myself and the global business world. I also built up systematic knowledge of business management and a wide personal and professional network. Studying the Global Part-time MBA at Alliance MBS is a really good investment.

With more than enough choice for customers, the global giants have to adapt to survive. Chinese consumer culture is very different to the western market. Companies need to be localised and quick decisions need to be made in China. You can’t wait two weeks for the headquarters in Europe to approve them. I believe that my MBA has helped give me that competitive advantage.My MBA gave me a wider vision of how business works – it upgraded me to the next level. Chinese education relies on listening in class every day with a test at the end to see what you have learned, but the Manchester MBA model of utilising your free time to study is more interesting, inspiring and motivating.

Yi Hsieh(Fred) Chen, graduated from FT MBA 2012, is the Head of Marketing Strategy in CreditEase, a China-based global leading Fintech and wealth management company. The company managing Chinese capital is heavily investing overseas specially into US and European market. Fred helped bridge Internship Programme and career opportunities between CreditEase and AMBS since 2016. Fred has 15 years marketing and strategy experience in finance, consulting, manufacture, and FMCG industries. He also played key role as an internal strategy consultant in Standard Chartered, 3M, and WPP, as well as was invited to speak inmany marketing and digital forums.

Jian has a proven track record in health and life science giants (Philips/Siemens/Medtronic) and his role covers solution incubation, strategic marketing, new product development, P&L management and open innovation, etc. Jian graduated from Peking University with a PhD degree and he also holds a MBA degree from Manchester Business School. In Intel, his team currently focuses on driving innovative healthcare computing solutions and wide ecosystem collaboration, which mainly falls into genomics medicine, cloud computing, biomedical bigdata analytics, HPC and artificial intelligence, etc.

Xiaohu (Tiger) Qiao is a doctoral candidate at University of Manchester (DBA, 2015 Intake). His research focuses on ‘How Inexperienced Acquirers from Emerging Economies Develop Acquisition Capability by Vicarious Learning in Cross-border Acquisitions’. Mr Tiger Qiao is a (Supply Chain) Operations Director in ODL Asia. He holds CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Professional), and he is a recognised CSCP instructor by APICS. Mr Tiger Qiao has 13 years experience in supply chain management. He formerly led the team building two new factories in China in 2003 and 2013 at Combibloc and Oliver- Toilas respectively. Tiger was recognised as 2010 Chairman’s Award Grand Winner in the innovation category at American Greetings.

A graduate of Manchester Business School ( GMBA), Jenfay was a co-founder of a intelligent construction company, while she applied the program of GMBA and she got few professional certificate in different industry. AMBS help her found the life she wanted and change the career journey Now she is founder of MT Design, the business of MT is more focus on education industry, and recently she is start to support few NGO program, such as Little Inventors, Community Space-Sharing, etc.

Shirley has been in this company for 17 years. After working in this company as sales manager for 10 years, total sales volume reach 100 million USD, she found that the foreign trade business trend has been changed. She chose to study MBA to change the way the Chinese Manufacture company has done. In 2011 she got the invitation from three very best University ,Xiamen University, Nanjing University, and Tongji-Manchester Business school, and finally she chose the dual master degree of Tongji-Manchester. She has got the excellent students certificate of Tongji University and pass with Merit in Manchester Business School. The most important is that she strictly follow the slogan of Manchester Business School, that is Learning by Doing, Original Thinking. After graduated from Manchester Business School in 2014, she got promoted as General Manager,and leading the company from loss to earn profit, and growing year by year. That’s an example of Education power.

A graduate of the University of Manchester (MSc Marketing, BA Economics), Lydia began her career in the oil industry with Petroineos in London. Now the President of Manjun Capital, her current interests lie in capital investment and project management across various sectors of China’s economy, including finance, law, power intelligence and media. Lydia also serves as a board member and shareholder at Jiuzhou Industrial Holdings Group, President of Beijing Yi Fang Commercial Factoring, and General Manager of Dongyi Yuanjun Shuhua Culture Co.

Tejuan (Trudie) Li, graduated from GMBA 2013, is the former Director of Direct to Consumers at naked Hub, a China based international co-working and hospitality brand. Trudie recently partnered with an IT team starting her own business focusing on workplace strategy and selection for small- medium sized teams. Trudie has over 13 years experience of business development and project management mainly in commercial real estate. She used to be a frequent speaker at AmCham Shanghai real estate committee and some industry events as a pioneer opinion provider for shared-workplace strategies in Shanghai. She has lived in Tokyo for a few years as well and speaks Japanese.

Steave has Over 17 years of diverse experience in automotive industry globally and almost 9 years in china region. He participates in product design, program management, Operation, Business Development and quality control skills under dynamic environment & team. He served in well-known 500 fortune such as Ford Automotive & Johnson Control in several key positions. During his spare time, He served as a Malaysia- Shanghai Business Association committee which provide Malaysian Businessman abroad consultancy and co-stakeholder for one of the famous SEA restaurant in town. He is also the founder of UoM badminton club created on 2016 and well operated with alumnus until now.

A graduate of the University of Manchester (LL.M.,International Business Law), Mr. Wu has participated in the entire legal service of acquisition, recombination for dozens of company, he led his team use the careful due diligence, excellent negotiation skills to help the acquiring firm (or acquired firm) obtain precious business opportunities and great commercial interests, and won the consistent praise from many clients. Meanwhile, Mr. Wu has provided legal service for several large scale enterprises and well- known Chinese companies, including Hanwha, China Chengtong Group, Essence Securities, Anxin Trust, Huaao Trust, etc.

“Learn how to design your thinking and apply to your business strategy”

AMBS teaching methods ”learning by doing” provided me first-hand experience in consulting practice like Not-for-Profits project worked with Bolton YMCA to explore hospitality business opportunity, UK consulting projects commissioned by Cisco to model and evaluate social and economic impact brought by different technologies in difference adoption curves, etc. The experience had helped in landing offers from consulting firms as well as my current company.

Janis has 10 years of HR professional experience in multinational companies. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim, the German pharmaceutical company, she was working in recruitment agencies for 5 years specialized in recruiting middle to senior management positions. Currently Janis is working as HR Business Partner at BI China, responsible for providing HR solutions to support talent development that facilitates business growth.

As of today, it is my fourth semester of MBA program. I am glad that I made the decision choosing Manchester for my MBA study. Really impressed by its level of international student background and diversity. Since July 2016 enrollment I have learnt and experienced much more than I could had ever imagined. Not only at academic side, I think we all agree that networking is equally important for MBA students, and both are available with MBS. There are so many talented, incredible people surrounded for me to learn from. Being influenced and inspired by western professors’ insights and opinions through workshop. Debating, argument, and the joy are words I would use to describe those past workshops I have joined. Besides, the course structure is well designed and balanced between individual & group work, which is suitable for part-time students.

I’m Kevin Miao, Chinese Name as Zhiqiang MIAO. It has been a great honor and fantastic life journey being with Manchester Business School for around three years. I have been planning to pursue a Global MBA degree since the 3rd year of the graduation from my Bachelor’s degree of Industrial Trade Engineering, however, it took me a quite a long time to find one globally well-recognized program while I could continue my work in professional development. I’ve moved around several largest metropolitan cities of China including Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai etc. where I took splendid adventures in several global Fortune 500 listed multinational companies such as Panasonic, Philips, GE, Nokia and Qualcomm etc.

Year 2018 marks the 10th Anniversary for the University of Manchester China Centre and also a grand success for Ms. Sherry Fu - the UoM China Director and her team. As an Alumni of the university, I share enormous happiness for the achievements of the university in this country so far and stay very positive about the prospective future of the UoM China Centre – the best is yet to come.

Hello, I am Ken Zheng, my Chinese name郑勇民, with 19+ years’ working experience in chemical and automotive industry & supply chain operations. Current, I am working for Solvay Group as Supply Chain Lead. I have effectively managed the Sales and Supply Chain Operations process to optimize company resources to support the growth of the business. I have one 11-year-old lively girl.

I study to learn the programming from my 3rd grade. So it is the major hobbies, even I don’t have too much hands-on coding work in my daily work, but I still like to learn the new technology and apply to some demos in my spare time.