Reflections on My Trip to China

After returning home, I had several assignments to complete reflecting on my time in China and the lessons I learned. I was tasked with writing five different reflection pieces, each on a different topic: 1) Major Reading Assignment and Report: 'Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory” by Peter Hessler, 2) Observations from My First Trip to China, 3) Overview of ARC China Visit, 4) Overview of Walmart China Visits, and 5) Overview of GoodMark-Asia and Li & Fung Visits. 

Some of the key lessons that I took away from our retail tour through China included the cultural and regional differences in China that impact the retail market, the supply chain shortcomings throughout China, the financial and consumer opportunities, and the macro retail trends in China and beyond.

Here is an excerpt of my favorite parts from Essay #4: Overview of Walmart China Visits on our time with Walmart China SVP & CFO Mario-Jose Medina: How to be Successful in International Business:

"Mr. Medina provided our group with a different approach to our learning experience at Walmart China and shared with us how to be a successful business person – especially in an increasingly global marketplace and at a multinational company. The first piece of advice that Mr. Medina offered us was to be tridimensional – a combination of head, heart, and gut. He described for us that life’s decisions are a journey of time, mistakes, and personal dilemmas, and even offered a formula for making mistakes: fail fast, often, and cheap.

The CFO also shared a new concept with us of the ‘VUCA’ world. The world is one of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. In order to succeed in this kind of world, we need to be professionals with Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. Finally, Mr. Medina recommended that we strive to be a combination of IQ (intelligence), EQ (emotional), and CQ (cultural) – in order to accomplish this, we must be open-minded and should attempt to work abroad and stretch ourselves by experiencing ‘culture shocks’ as often as possible. He closed with his adaptation to the popular Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones quote, 'You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet, the books you read, and the places you go.'"

As a part of our coursework, we were also assigned an online photo album with detailed explanations of the photos that depict some of the key lessons from our trip. Here is the link to my album: http://photobucket.com/uachina2012_tammy. I should probably warn you that there are more than 500 photos here, but for a smaller album of just the highlights with the 25 key lesson descriptions can be found via this link: http://s1076.photobucket.com/home/uachina2012/tag/Photo Essay Assignment. And if that is still too much for you, haha - here are only a few: 

- Tammy :o)

Home Sweet Home

I've finally made it home from my adventures abroad in China and started to get settled back into my summer internship at Kellogg and Director roles with MBA Women International. I had such an amazing time in China with my fellow travel mates from the UofA - it's definitely been hard to get adjusted back to daily life. I'm still absorbing all of the incredible lessons that I will forever take away from my brief visit to a very different far-away land, but I do know for sure that I want to seek out opportunities to live abroad as a young professional to further develop myself and career. In the meantime, I'm also still learning so much in my time at Kellogg. From developing my skills in Excel, Retail Link, and Access to beginning to really understand the tactical and strategic relationship of Kellogg as vendor and Walmart as buyer, every day I legitimately take away something new. During my spare time (haha), I'm also working with an incredibly talented group of ladies from MBA Women International. We have been drafting a membership and leadership survey to go out next week to further develop and support our initiatives for the year to bring new and improved benefits to our general membership and chapter affiliates. I'm really excited to see what we can accomplish as a team, and I will be sure to keep you updated on our progress as well. Until next time, I leave you with the link to meet my fellow National Student Leadership Team members and a few more photos from China. Enjoy!

http://www.mbawomen.org/national-student-leadership-team

- Tammy :o)

Paris of the East

It's Shanghai Noon! This will likely be my last post before I make it back to the states, but I wanted to show you some photos of my time here in Shanghai. We've been able to travel to the Jade Buddha Temple, Yu Garden, the Bund, and the tallest building in China - the Shanghai World Financial Building. We also got to visit with Unilever, Arc China, and Kantar Retail. Although I'm excited to start my journey back home tomorrow, I'm definitely going to miss the group I've gotten to travel with throughout China and I will remember my trip here fondly and always look for chances to come back. I'll share more about the whole trip when I have better access to Internet, but thanks for following my trip thus far!

- Tammy :o)