Qin Li is a German national originally from the Shanghai area who has made Europe her home over the past few years.
She joined IMD’s MBA class recently for an intensive year of studies on business practice, leadership, self-discovery, and much more.
With a background in law and finance, and having lived most recently in Frankfurt, Germany, before coming to Lausanne, Qin is taking a liking quite quickly to her new city on the shores of Lake Geneva as well as to the MBA and her classmates.
If Qin was able to take a year off from her career to pursue the MBA, it was in part thanks to the IMD Stewart Hamilton Scholarship.
Qin was selected to receive the scholarship out of numerous candidates due to her exceptional grasp of, and desire to make a difference in, the area corporate governance and responsibility.
“I feel very grateful for the scholarship and it makes me even more conscious that corporate governance and responsibility is more important in today’s world than ever,” said Qin.
Working in an investment bank in the area of equity capital market, Qin said she has witnessed cases of corporate abuse and helped her clients to develop functional corporate governance systems, and that has motivated her even more to pursue further knowledge about responsible conduct for companies.
As far as Qin’s career goes, she sees herself as a natural bridge-builder between European and Chinese business. After several years working experience as legal and financial advisory, her next goal is to work for multinational companies with Chinese investors on board.
So far Qin has found her classmates to be one of the program’s main assets. “They have a positive energy and are very experienced. They are hard-working, and they rally around one another to help those in difficulty. It is a motivating environment,” she said.
When asked what she thought about the broad diversity of her classmates coming from all around the world, Qin said that: “We live in a global world now and I don’t really feel like my classmates are from a different culture. I think their personalities, behaviour and working styles are more differentiating, and provide more for us to learn from”.
According to Qin, the learning style at IMD is strong because it has a more practical focus than an academic one and the pedagogical methods are innovative with lots of role play, consulting projects and others that will benefit participants right away in the real world upon completion of the program.
To sum up Qin said: “IMD is a great platform to reflect on the past and develop for the future”.
Every year, IMD’s MBA program enrols 90 mature individuals, with an average work experience of 7 years, broad international exposure and recognized leadership potential. They invest 11 months of rigorous work to acquire a solid and actionable education that is research-based but practice-focused. They work with coaches and analysts to develop themselves and each other. We offer a state-of-the-art career counselling process and access to IMD’s community of business executives and corporate sponsors. At the end, we aim to provide the skills to know, the confidence to act and the humility to lead.
