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CEMS Magazine
SPRING 2014
STUDENT & ALUMNI FOCUS
CEMS Adventure: Alumna Anqi Huang I started my CEMS adventure in 2010 at my home university, ESADE, in Barcelona and finished my experience at Copenhagen Business School. The moment I signed the CEMS Global Values Statement in St. Gallen still dwells in my memory. What does CEMS mean to me? It is not merely a community of top international business schools and leading corporate partners from various sectors. It is a community of students who are continuously pursuing excellence with a spirit of global citizenship. I still remember the time when I needed to move to Portugal for my CEMS intern-
It is a community of students who are continuously pursuing excellence with a spirit of global citizenship.
ship with EDP, a CEMS corporate partner. The CEMS office at Nova warmly helped me with accommodation and put me in contact with the local CEMS Student Club. Later on, when I needed to move to Finland to join the KONE International Trainee Program, the CEMS office at Aalto University guided me and immediately extended invitations to CEMS activities there. As a girl born and raised in China, studying in Europe was very challenging. Every move to a new country was a new hurdle. However, I could not have enjoyed my two-year experience with CEMS more. No matter where I went, I met CEMS people who adhered to the same values as I did. I have heard the saying, “Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream.” The CEMS programme has planted the CEMS seeds in all of us and helped us fulfil our dreams, empowering us to change in the world.
Mentoring Giving Back to the CEMS Community Katarina Paulickova - CEMS Alumna 2010 (VSE-LSM), now working as HR Business Partner in Plzensky Prazdroj
How can we foster student-alumni connections? What would be the best way to increase the value of CEMS and give back to the CEMS community? In the Czech Republic we agreed that a mentoring programme between alumni and students would do it. The pilot round was launched in November 2013. Ten mentoring couples were matched according to their preferences. After the training and the first get-together it was up to them to set rules of mutual cooperation and to leverage this experience. Mentors further develop their interpersonal skills. As for students, it is something extra that they do not get at school – support, valuable advice and the possibility to learn from others’ successes and mistakes. Positive feedback from both sides inspired us to launch the second wave in March 2014. We plan to implement several improvements and hope that the programme will become part of our regular yearly agenda, with an increasing number of participants.