Peru, Berkeley Solution Group and Asia Business Conference

Ever since I accepted my summer internship offer, I have become even less reluctant to study for my classes. I am a strong believer that the best way to learn in an MBA program is to get yourself involved. This is why I've been spending most of my time with extra-curriculum activities in the first half of the spring semester:

Plan a Peru trip for 13 people for the upcoming spring break, Lead consulting projects for the Berkeley Solution Group and market the Asia Business Conference. When I signed up to take these responsibilities, I did not know how much effort I need to put in nor did I know what challenges or frustrations I will encounter. However, I was confident that I will overcome them as they come to me. Plan a Peru trip: This started as just a couple of us who wanted to take advantage of Peru's no Visa requirement for Taiwanese passport holders. But as the words got out, more and more people wanted to join and we actually had to put a limit on the number people for the trip. All I can say is that planning for 4 people was VERY different from planning for 13 people. In the beginning I sent out weekly updates to get people's feedbacks on the itinerary, but the response rate was very low as people were busy with recruiting. It turned out my biggest challenge was to decide what decisions I should make on my own vs. letting people voice their opinion. While it's good to let everyone have a say, a leader has to take a stance and make wise decisions when people have no/different views. (And they almost always will have different, even conflicting, views!) I am glad that in the end we settled something that looks extremely exciting and within our budget

Lead consulting projects for the Berkeley Solution Group (BSG): Having been on the working team side (us) of consulting projects, I joined the BSG to get experiences on the partner side (them) . I took the lead on a market sizing/assessing market opportunity project for a small online distributor even though I had a gut feeling that the client will be demanding. It turned out that not only was he challenging us a lot, he was also quite controlling and condescending. Managing people of this type takes much energy/patience and time--No wonder partners gets compensated so much. Despite the frustration of dealing with him, I learned something valuable from him as well : As a partner ( a.k.a. a sales person), never start sentence with a no when speaking to the client. We can say no to our colleagues, parents, boyfriends, classmates but never to a client. I have a feeling that this project is not going to be an easy ride but it will definitely help me expose to a broader spectrum of business people

VP of the marketing for the Asia Business Conference: The Berkeley Asia Business Conference is an annual, full-day event organized and initiated by Haas MBA students. This event aims to bring together business professionals, entrepreneurs and students to discuss and exchange ideas on current Asia business topics. The theme for this year was " Global ambition, local transformation." In the beginning I was pretty confused about how I should market the event without knowing who our panelists/keynote speakers will be and what they will be talking about (ambiguity hinders me from taking actions) Furthermore, I did not know what was the best way to reach our target audience (which we broadly defined as any who is interested in learning about the latest trends in Asia) and what was the best way to reach them. In the end we did a lot of "grassroots" marketing: posting on facebook, MBAA alert, campus wide career service, newspaper ads on Daily Californian, Alumni calendar, professional networks, personal emails to the evening and weekend MBA, SF Craigslist, and flyers around the campus. Postcards in people's mailbox...you name it. Surprisingly, we were able to get 175 registrations ( a 75% increase from last year!) thanks to everyone's effort in spreading the words.. (Internet and email rocks) Throughout the process I felt there were many improvement areas but the key learning was be organized> be inspiring/excited > be flexible Not the other way around.