In the fall semester of 2016-2017 academic year, a newly-designed Alumni Mentorship Program (AMP) was carried out at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM), bringing together over 200 MBA students and 57 alumni in purposeful, mutually rewarding relationships.

Instead of assigning students to alumni mentors, the new AMP enables students to select alumni mentors in fields that interest them. Alumni mentors were grouped into five different teams by their industry backgrounds. Each MBA student could choose to join up to two groups based on his or her personal and career interests.

Six alumni mentors were invited to speak at 5 lectures, sharing the real-world business experience, information related to career paths, and the general wisdom that mentors have had thus far. Cynthia Ma talked about her personal experience about making the transition from an engineering background to business. Her speech touched female MBA students especially when she discussed the difficulties that women faced in the workplace. She offered some strategies for women to increase their chances of success. The next lecture themed on venture capital and private equity industry was delivered by YU Tong. She presented the detailed inner mechanics of different functions within the investment process. YU Tong encouraged MBA students to pursuit a career in the investment industry as she noted that the industry is always looking for talents in this fast changing environment. ZHANG Yong shared personal experiences and insights from the investment banking industry. PANG Rui and WANG Mengliang from the healthcare industry, held a joint discussion panel. WANG Mengliang gave a detailed overview of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry with concrete statistics, detailed explanation of current regulatory situation, insights on profit generation, and future industry outlook. PANG Rui dissected a few well-known cases with the participants to demonstrate the role of public relations in the healthcare industry. ZHANG Tao gave a talk on the topic of merger and acquisitions.

Besides lectures, alumni mentors also organized a series of company site visits for MBA students to deepen their understanding of different industries. Alumni mentor YANG Ning organized a site visit tour to the General Electric (GE) Beijing Technology Park including several informational lectures about an overview of GE business and the newest developments in aerospace and medical sector of GE. Alumni mentor LIU Xin organized a site visit tour to a technology company called Mobvoi, which is a rising start-up company specialize in artificial intelligence in speech recognition and voice search. MBA Students got a glimpse into how a start-up functions in the cutting edge technology sector.

The AMP program has witnessed a tremendous amount of active exchanges between alumni mentors and the Global MBA students in the semester. Students and alumni alike leave the program with expanded networks and career information that will help prepare them for the road ahead.

(by YANG Kenneth, Tsinghua-MIT Global MBA Class of 2018)