——How did you first hear about GCC and what inspired you to start a GCC chapter at Vanderbilt? During the first year of GCC Vanderbilt, how did you establish the organization and get other students involved?
I’ll start with the inspiration part first. I came back to Vanderbilt senior fall after a semester at Fudan University, and I realized that there was no group or institution on campus that connected Chinese nationals and non-Chinese in a meaningful way. I reached out to one of my best friends on campus, Wynne Lam, who is from Hong Kong, and I shared with him the gap that I identified and he agreed that nothing on campus existed. So Wynne and I spent time brainstorming the problem and trying to figure out the best way to solve it. We spent a bunch of time researching different student organizations, and we found this nascent organization called Global China Connection at Columbia University. We reached out and spoke to Derek Fu who was one of the founders of GCC and explained to him what we were hoping to do. He said, that aligns perfectly with our mission so why don’t you guys become the Vanderbilt chapter?
We became the Vanderbilt chapter and spent a lot of time that fall doing the necessary work to get founded, funded, and get professor support. Brian Heuser from Peabody was our initial advisor and he was very important and instrumental to making sure we had the necessary support to continue to grow. And we actually won that first year the best international organization (It was the award given out at the end of the year for student groups and we earned the award for best international focused student group.)
——How do you see the role of GCC chapters on college campuses evolving as China’s relationship with the United States (and other countries) becomes more and more important?
I see the GCC chapters across campuses as the place where people on campus as well as externally look to for inspiration, for a model of how the two nations [the US and China] should be interacting. The beautiful thing about GCC is that it brings together people who are from diverse backgrounds and it bands them together over a common goal, which is to build and run a student organization and put together events that are meaningful. That’s a great unifying mechanism, and it sends a great message to US-China relationships and to the leadership at the highest level that basically the same dynamic can be at play – the two sides should come together and lead this organization, which is planet earth, and should realize that there’s something more important at stake, that the shared interests are rife and focus on that instead of where shared interests do not align.
To summarize there, basically chapters around the US and globally should serve as a model for what a high functioning US-China relationship looks like and can be like.
——After graduating in 2010, what kind of experiences from working in GCC have you found applicable to your professional life?
Following graduation I wanted to model what my Chinese peers were doing, which was going to leading US universities and then working for global companies (and doing that outside of China). I wanted to mirror that. I had already gone to a leading Chinese university, Fudan, and then I wanted to work for a leading Chinese company. The opportunity actually came through GCC. I went on a winter delegation which was organized by the Columbia chapter and they invited presidents of different chapters to join. We spent our winter break in Beijing meeting with leaders at an array of leading Chinese companies and institutions. During that trip I was able to meet the Vice-President of Sinotrans, and Sinotrans was in the process of building global operations. I worked with him to develop a role where I would enter the new hire class of 2010 and become a part of Sinotrans. And I was the first foreign new hire in Sinotrans’ 60 year history. I spent four years working within Sinotrans, which is a SASAC [State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission] level state owned enterprise. And it was a wonderful opportunity, a great exposure to what life was like in Beijing and what it’s like to work inside a large SOE. I feel like my GCC experience was crucial in not only setting up that opportunity but also in being able to excel inside of it.
And broadly, I would say that GCC is maybe the most important leadership experience I had, certainly in college. It provided me this amazing sandbox, if you will, to test out different leadership skills and styles and really understand what it takes to lead, and what an awesome responsibility it will be when you are in charge.
My lessons were numerous. Maybe the most important takeaway is that a good leader leads an organization, a great leader is able to put in place leaders to take the organization to the next level. I spent a lot of my time senior year recruiting people who I felt had the capacity to lead the organization in years to come. Because I didn’t want GCC to be there for just one year. While Wynne, Nancy Tan and myself were in charge, I wanted to make sure that it would be there for decades. That’s why I’m excited that you and the current team are in charge and you guys are in charge a decade after it was erected. And you all have the great opportunity to build on this institution with decades of history. It’s hard to express how much I appreciate you and your team stewarding this organization and bringing it to new heights.
——What were some of your favorite things about living in China?
The first thing that comes to mind is the experience of living in a place where day to day I was challenged in almost every facet of life because everything is new, the culture, the language, the geography – just all new. You’re being bombarded by an unbelievable amount of challenges and it’s a great feeling day in and day out to battle those. I loved being able to speak Mandarin out of necessity. I felt like there was really no better way to learn a language than to have that dynamic put upon you.
And the what I would say the incomparable group of people that you get to meet. By that I mean the diversity of people – on any given day I could be interacting with someone who is 78 years old who had lived through so much China’s transformation and be conversing with them in Mandarin. And I actually held some really close relationships with older people who lived on my street to a peer of mine who is maybe from the UK who is working in Beijing at the British Embassy. There’s a wide array of people that you can meet, especially living in Beijing.
——Finally, is there anything you would want to say to current GCC members or those interested in China-related issues?
My advice is to find a student organization that you feel passionate about and then engage with that student organization and dedicate a lot of time to it. Focus on leading peers and being led by peers. That second suggestion I actioned myself when I went to business school. In business school I purposefully selected student organizations where I was being led by someone that I respected who I could learn from. And I think that GCC is a great opportunity to do that. Really test out your leadership skills and use GCC as a platform to experiment with different styles. Learn how to lead by doing it – most things in life are learned best by doing and leadership is a perfect example of that. GCC provides a great platform to do just that.
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