by Andrea Conti, Global MiM 2018
In Ho Chi Minh City starting the motorcycle trip across Cambodia Laos and Vietnam.
One year has passed since I completed the Global MiM as part of its second ever cohort and the memories made during the programme are countless. The opportunity to study at LBS and Fudan was priceless.
The year at LBS was a rollercoaster of courses, extracurricular activities, workshops, networking and experiencing London. The year was fun, challenging and engaging, every day I felt grateful to be there.
During the summer in between London Business School and Fudan University, I decided to stretch myself and work in Cambodia as a finance intern in Leopard Capital, a US Private Equity firm focused on frontier markets. Finance in frontier countries is very different, for better or for worse, than in developed countries so it was interesting to gain this wider perspective. I then further made the most of the opportunity to motorcycle across Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam before moving to Shanghai. It was a truly memorable summer.
Once in Shanghai, I quickly realised that Fudan was very different to LBS. Fudan is a huge University, that only recently opened to international students and, therefore, is hard to keep the familiar atmosphere so characteristic of LBS. Nevertheless, it provided a good window inside the Chinese business environment and culture.
With the little monks I spent an afternoon playing with in rural Myanmar.
Shanghai is also an extremely exciting city to live in. The city offers something for everyone, full of opportunities, buzzing with restaurants, cafes and an amazing nightlife. During my time in Fudan, I also worked at the New York University Shanghai Campus as a research fellow to investigate the internationalisation strategies of the major Chinese tech companies and as a teaching assistant for the course “Doing Business in China”. Living between these two major universities was a great opportunity to challenge my understanding about China even further.
Shanghai also provides a great starting point to explore Asia, with an airport that connects the city with almost every destination in Asia at convenient airfares. I leveraged this opportunity to go to Hong Kong, Tibet, Myanmar, Indonesia, Nepal and India, experiences that added even more value to the programme.
After the GMiM, I joined Novo Nordisk, the leading pharmaceutical company in the Diabetes and Obesity Care as an AAMEO Finance Graduate. The first year of the programme took part in the Dubai Office, that is the AAMEO Region HQ, a region that includes 110+ countries. For the first six months, I worked in the Commercial Affairs and Strategy team and, for the second six months, I worked in the Finance and Operations team. I took part in multiple projects, and travelled across the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, India and Denmark.
Yak riding in Tibet.
Now, for my third rotation, I am in the Financial Planning and Analysis team in Nairobi, where we control 39 countries across Middle Africa, a truly challenging region due to the many complex political and economic realities. Novo Nordisk commits itself to change the life of diabetic patients and in Africa we are trying to expand patient’s coverage as much as possible.
The last six months of the programme are yet to be decided and could be in the Company’s HQ in Denmark or in India, Iran, Russia or any other country in the AAMEO Region, adding even more excitement to the future.
The GMiM programme was the beginning of a life-changing journey. The programme not only provided strong business foundations and great soft skills, but also a network of people committed to making a difference in the fields they operate in. It has truly set me up to have a global career.