Nanyang MBA Students donate to Singapore Special Olympics

Nanyang MBA Students donate to Singapore Special Olympics

Student leaders of The NANYANG MBA handed over a cheque donation of S$11,000 to Singapore Special Olympics, represented by the association’s President, Teo-Koh Sock Miang. The donation was a result of a charity drive, “2012 Nanyang MBA Olympics” jointly organised by the school’s MBA students Corporate Social Responsibility Club (CSR) and the Women in Business Club (WIB).


Spearheaded by four student leaders, Eric Oandasan (from the Philippines, CSR Club Co-Chair), Nyan Kyaw (from Myanmar, CSR Club Co-Chair), Filda Yusgiantoro (from Indonesia, WIB Co-Chair) and Clarie Kwa (from Singapore, WIB Co-Chair), the charity event obtained fervent support from The NANYANG MBA, and corporations and foundations from the region. Sponsors include Tanoto Foundation, Lee Foundation, Iwan Tirta Foundation, Singapore Press Holdings Foundation, and companies such as Suntory, OSIM, Adidas, GNC, Ice Cool and IBM.

The NANYANG MBA Olympics, first held in 2011 by The NANYANG MBA CSR club, aims to build camaraderie among MBAs in Singapore  and more importantly, to raise funds for a social cause. In its 2nd year, the event has grown to attract more participation from MBA students and sponsors alike, with the WIB club lending its experience in fund raising and events management. In keeping with the 2012 London Olympics theme, the organizers chose Singapore Special Olympics as the beneficiary. The NANYANG MBA strives to bring this “Olympics” to a bigger stage by inviting MBA students from the rest of Asia in the future.

Teo-Koh Sock Miang, President of The Special Olympics, a voluntary organization for people who have intellectual disabilities, says “The Special Olympics is very grateful to The NANYANG MBA CSR club as well as the WIB club for coming together and doing this project to raise funds for the Special Olympics Singapore.  The funds raised will allow our athletes to have training opportunities, to have competition opportunities and will also help provide for facilities and coaching.  And definitely, The NANYANG MBA students have come through for us.  We thank them so much.”

“Eric and I are thankful to all fellow MBA cohort, MBA students from NUS, SMU, INSEAD and ESSEC, and our generous sponsors, without whose help we could not have organised this event,” says Nyan. “Special thanks also to WIB for volunteering to co-organise this event.  Although this cheque handing ceremony marks the closure of the 2012 Nanyang MBA Olympics, we hope this will be a tradition that will continue for years to come. We are also grateful for the opportunity we had in meeting the kids of Singapore Special Olympics. Their enthusiasm in life really puts a smile on our faces, despite our embarrassing loss to them in the exhibition futsal match."

Filda and Clarie add on, “We like to commend The NANYANG MBA students who stepped up to volunteer in making the event successful. No matter how mundane the jobs were, such as forming assembly lines to prepare the goodie bags and handling registration, no matter how smart they are in school and successful at work, our fellow volunteers were very attentive to the needs of the participants and beneficiaries. This is the servitude we hope to see in MBA students who are also the future leaders of the society. We are, indeed, very happy to see that our charity drive has made a good difference for everyone involved.”

Read more about The NANYANG MBA Olympics in the blog. 
View photos in the flickr site.

An Interview - to be published soon

We just replied an interview request with this write-up. When the article is published in proper, we'll post it here but we like to share some excerpts from the draft first - to our WIB members, no matter where you are.

"....

Running the club that counts several nationalities among its members has been a beautiful experience for us. Of course, it was not a bed of roses especially since we had no predecessors to rely for advice. The two co-chairs wear multiple hats. One is a full-time student and a full-time mother (mothers cannot take leave, can they?). The other is a part-time student with a full-time job. However, we share the vision to see the club take off and understand the servitude required from leaders. We are privileged to have help extended by club members to source for senior professionals and the school for supporting its activities in logistics and finance.

A special characteristic about our club is its inclusiveness. We recognize that men and women must learn to work alongside with one another. Hence many of our events are open to the guys too. Similarly, our club mentorship programme includes male mentors. Being a small organization with big dreams, we constantly seek collaborations to benefit our members, the school and even the society. A fine example is the Nanyang MBA Olympics which we jointly organized with the school’s CSR club. Ultimately, network is an asset and networking is an ability which we leverage heavily on to nurture this budding organization and its members.

The biggest challenge for women in business at the moment is making their presence known – seen and heard. The business setting has traditionally been male-dominated, even in the MBA class. As observed frequently, few women speak up. There has been even research that suggests women’s unwillingness to speak up is biologically influenced. We are not sure how useful this piece of information is but we do know one thing for sure - women who can overcome any inner doubts or fear are able to stand out more easily than others. Women have come a long way since our grandmothers’ and mothers’ time. With each generation, women have achieved milestones for themselves and our generation will not be an exception." 

Article from BusinessBecause: Nanyang Business School Launches A Women In Business Club!

Nanyang Business School Launches A Women In Business Club! | BusinessBecause

Clarie Kwa co-founded the first Women in Business Club at Nanyang Business School while studying part-time for an MBA, holding down a full-time job and being a wife. She and her partner hope the club will nurture more female business leaders and they've garnered some successes already!


Clarie, 30, is specializing in Strategy and is due to complete her part-time MBA from Nanyang Business School in 2013. She considers herself to have a varied background and is complementing it with an MBA. In 2004, she gained her undergraduate degree in Economics and Psychology from the National University of Singapore. Since then she has worked in operations, management, business and sales coaching and financial advisory and insurance. Presently, she is a senior executive in Prudential Assurance Company Singapore, involved in knowledge development where she trains insurance products and investment solutions.


When Clarie started her MBA in late July 2011, her and co-chair Filda Yusgiantoro noted the special constraints that women in business faced. They wanted to create a platform that could facilitate women’s successes in business. “We found it strange that there was no women in business club at Nanyang because all the top business schools have such clubs so two of us decided to start one”, says Clarie. By September 2011, the club was raring to kick off. It held its inauguration centred around the theme “Carpe Diem” a Latin phrase meaning "seize the day" on the 28th of September. Since then, the club has organized seminars on public speaking and workshops on networking and forming business alliances.


Nanyang’s MBA alumni and faculty have been very supportive. Clarie said that female alumni have been very happy to come in and speak or present at events. They’ve organized dinner dates where senior execs from top companies and private banks come to share their insight into the business world and they’ve also been involved with mentoring current MBA students. For Clarie, the most significant achievement of the club to date has been seeing club members believe that they can achieve what they came on the MBA for. She says, “standing out is a challenge, there are family women here who are working and studying at the same time but still manage to shine. My co-chair has a two-year-old son, I don’t know how she does it!” On the Nanyang MBA, Clarie has found the challenge to think differently as well as the additional satisfaction of being a pioneer of the Women in Business Club at Nanyang Business School.


Studying in one of Asia's most global cities lets her take notes on and compare the evolution of business strategies worldwide. This semester she is going on a business mission to China as part of her MBA to network and discover how global business is going to grow. She sees a lot of scope for development as a woman and as a future business leader, and you can follow the journey of the Nanyang MBA Women in Business Club on their blog.


(article from: http://businessbecause.com/news/Executive-MBA/nanyang-business-school-launches-a-women-in-business-club-81309)

MBAs Fave Vacations And Hot Trends For 2012

Two of our Women in Business members are here:

MBAs Fave Vacations And Hot Trends For 2012 | BusinessBecause

Clarie Kwa - MBA at Nanyang Business School
"Next year, MBA students are going to be more interested to have a piece of the emerging markets in their resume via student exchange, international internships, research etc. Although we've been seeing the start of this trend in recent times, we expect to see a significant shift of attitude towards emerging markets from being "good to know" to "must know". MBA students will expect to spend some years of their career life in this market, especially if they are to graduate in the next few years."


Wei Fang Ng - MBA at Nanyang Business School
"This year I traveled only around the Asia region and I enjoyed visiting Sydney, Australia most. The night view of the Sydney harbor was mesmerizing. There is also the unforgettable tasty Deep Fried Mud Crab with Salt and Pepper from Golden Century Seafood Restaurant. It is a must try!"

"I think the hot new trend is how to drive sustainability in businesses rather than just doing CSR activities for CSR but embed CSR into the core business so that it is align to the long term strategic goals of the organisation."

(Article from: http://www.businessbecause.com/news/funny-MBA/mba-trends-travel-81234)

Almost Over...

By: Filda Yusgiantoro

I can’t believe now we are in our 3^rd trimester! The time passed so quickly that I remember clearly on the day we had for our school’s orientation which I had my first outbound with full of fun and laughter. I am also very happy to meet new friends and (secretly) I do not regret at all to take my husband’s advice for taking Nanyang MBA in Singapore. It was the best decision in my life!

As we are entering T3, a few of our friends from our batch will leave by the end of this trimester. A part of them will go to another country for exchange, a part of the full timers will actually finish all of their course because they had speed up and overload themselves with extra modules since T1, and yet, they still got good grades. Hence, WIB club for the first batch will also finish in the end of T3. It was the time in WIB club, which I perceived as the most exciting moment during my MBA and will be an unforgettable journey.

Clarie Kwa, my co-partner running this club, is a lady who I admired most because she has full of ideas, an excellent organizer and a great leader. Both of us work really well with each other since the beginning of the initial set up of the club.

For our beautiful and supportive WIB members, you ladies rock! All of you are the ones that make me and Clarie go on to continue to make this new club exists and to fulfill our commitment to provide platform for all of us and to prepare for us to be a great woman leader in the future.

I believe that all of us enjoy our time in the club. Once we have spread our wings after MBA, we know that we have built a one strong community together.

A community called the “Nanyang MBA Women In Business club”.



(First WIB Informal Gathering - at Spizza Bukit Timah)

(Informal WIB Gathering with male guests – at CityHall)

(WIB Dinner Date with Mrs Meliza Musa, a female role model from one of the Wall Street banks – at Verve Pizzeria One-North)

(Nanyang MBA Olympics 2012 - WIB club & CSR club event collaboration)

18 March 2012 - Nanyang MBA Olympics

Nanyang MBA Olympics: London Olympic, MBA Olympics, Special Olympics Sin...:


Forget the Year of the Dragon. This is the year for Olympics. In a couple of weeks, we are going to kick off with our MBA Olympics 2012, so hope you all have formed your teams and are getting ready for the games!

As mentioned earlier, MBA Olympics was started last year by the CSR club of Nanyang MBA. This year it is going to be a joint event between CSR club and Women In Business (WIB) of the Nanyang MBA. The aim of this event is to provide all MBA students in Singapore to get together and have some fun together while raising awareness and funds for a worthy cause. Last year funds were raised for Cambodia Trust but this year we thought we would go for a local organisation and after some searching, came upon Special Olympics Singapore.

This is a non-profit organization that dedicates itself to providing sports training and competitions for persons with intellectual disabilities, giving them opportunities to develop physical fitness, self-esteem and confidence, and become productive and respected members of society.

To add a bit of twist to the event, we have planned a few exhibition matches with teams from Special Olympics Singapore AND they have been training, which is more than I can say for our students (sorry guys, don't kick me from the team).

(Article from: http://nanyangmbaolympics.blogspot.com)

Speaking in Style

By Ramya Krishna (Double MBA program NTU-Waseda University intake 2011)

Don’t we all want to be good speakers ?

We all want to impress, influence and motivate our teams, clients, each and every person we meet.
How then do we get there? How do we train and practice? Like everybody else, I had a plethora of the similar never ending questions.

‘Get- to- the- Point’ a Public speaking workshop by Eric Feng, organized by Nanyang MBA Women In Business Club of Nanyang Business School, was a perfect avenue to learn some great tips.

The event was conducted right after our Mid trimester holidays on January 13, 2012 at NTU North Campus, so it was a refreshing start to a new year for me. Eric Feng, the public speaking coach for CEO’s in Asia, was our wonderful guest and coach for the event. Contrary to what you might expect in sessions like these, we had lots of fun. Yes absolute fun.

Wonder why all the learning in the world isn’t the same.

(Eric Feng in Action)

We started off with writing questions and concerns we had about public speaking and shared it with others who were present there. Eric answered all of our questions with examples, leaving no room for doubts.

(Sharing their questions, my friends ‘Widi’ and ‘Helen’)

(The rest of us discussing the same ☺)

All this was an exercise to get to know, build trust and to get to the same level of the audience. It was a starter for us to calm down and refresh at the start of the event. We were then divided into 2 groups to play a game. Each team had a leader who would throw the balls towards his/her team under a certain time limit and the members were supposed to catch and hold the balls as many as they could in just their hands.

(All of us in action trying to catch the balls..)

This was done to drive home certain key points related to public speaking. Eric explained the simple criteria based on which the audience judge the presentation. He explained how to create Clarity, how to prioritize, how to have clear flow and how to develop a meaningful structure for the presentation.

He also mentioned that a presentation should have ‘One Key message’, and the importance of conveying that key message in a story so that it is more impactful.

Eric gave us several valuable tips on how to speak with confidence, how to fight the stress of public speaking and many other things that keep running in our minds while preparing for our presentations.

We soon understood the nuances of public speaking, the audience and what goes on in their minds.

Each time Eric explained something, I would marvel “How true, how true. Now I know what to do” ☺

Then we had 3 volunteers who bravely took up the challenge to present, and earned the privilege of getting critiqued by Eric. I was one of the threee and surprisingly, we chose 3 different topics which were very different in nature and context.

(Below is my good friend Edwin Ong, making a presentation about ‘Singapore Airlines’ where he is currently employed. ☺)

I found the way he analyses our presentations and the feedback he gaveto be extremely useful. The audience actually understood what to do and what not to do. I am sure Edwin, you and I, will never make the same mistakes again ☺.

(Eric Feng giving his critical feedback to Edwin right after his presentation)

(My friend Eric Oandasan presenting on ‘The differences between Men and Women: And how they still work together’ ☺)

(It was me presenting on ‘The Women Empowerment’☺)

We actually got to see three different kinds of presentations and how to handle such varied topics effectively, through Eric’s Feedback and analysis.

In most of my previous experiences in public speaking, the feedback from mentors would usually be mellowed. However Eric judges you at a different level altogether.He wants you to aim for excellence and he tells you how to get there. That was the best part of him and that’s what you want to learn.

As my friend Wahyu Widianti remarked, “Nervousness is only our perception. Audience usually thinks that the presenter is an expert in the topic he/she presents.”

My friend Edwin, whom I feel is a good presenter himself says that “Eric Feng’s Get- to- the-Point is a very useful workshop for everyone to attend, including the experienced presenters who wish to further hone and excel their presentation skills.”

Everyone of us felt more confidant at the end of the day. I now know how to get my point across more clearly . It was indeed a fantastic and a memorable event organized by Nanyang MBA Women In Business Club.

(Having fun during the workshop)

(A team photo with Eric Feng and all the to be leaders)

An Entrepreneur's Story "From Networking to Business Alliances" Workshop

By: Clarie Kwa & Filda Yusgiantoro (Nanyang MBA intake 2011)

On the 10^th of December 2011, the Nanyang MBA Women in Business club conducted a workshop “An Entrepreneur’s Story”. We had the honor of welcoming Mllie Stephanie, founder and CEO of Mobiliari Media Group, a company that counts Indonesia Tatler and Forbes Indonesia among its many publications, to share her experiences with us.

Millie is a veteran in the publications industry in Indonesia and has a MBA from which she graduated cum de laude. However, she has had her fair share of trials and tribulations in the early days of her entrepreneurial career. Sharing how her first and unpaid publication project flopped, she said, “Nothing will ever prepare you for life.” Her message to the members was clear and crisp. “Unlearn what you’ve learnt”, she laughed and continued to point out how humans have a need for structure and predictability. Yet, the entrepreneurial path is nothing but predictable. To overcome the fear and doubt that can plague every new idea, Millie encouraged everyone to recognize that every moment is new. It is thus only sensible to be always present and savor one moment at a time.  To do that, we need to be relaxed and go with the flow. Millie continued to emphasize that this does not conflict with the need to strategize and plan. The key to go with the flow is to never be attached to the outcome but to instead focus on the process itself to achieve what we want in life. She cited David Foster, a multiple Grammy Award winner and current Chairman of Verve Music Group whom she had the pleasure of meeting some time back, “Whenever I enter my studio wanting to produce a song, the minute I want to control, I no longer produce anything.”

Millie shared how her role model was her mother whom she described as hardworking and humble. Having many friends from different background and nationalities, Millie finds her mother the perfect example of a good networker. Sharing how she used to be a shy person and would hide behind her mother’s for comfort in various networking events, she soon realized the importance of networking and that she needed to step up to establish her own networking. This helped her to be independent and gain respect from people, thus supporting her business and alliances.

Another engaging point of the workshop was the sharing of viewpoints from both gender representatives. The general consensus was that women entrepreneurs can earn the respect of their male counterparts by being hands-on in the business. Support groups protected by confidentiality, such as Young Presidents’ Organizations (YPO), are safe havens for entrepreneurs and managers, helping them to maintain clarity and emotional balance. After all, entrepreneurship is about living one’s dreams and while tough, it should be an enjoyable journey.

It was an honor to have Millie share with WIB. She also generously gave each attendee a copy of the latest Forbes Indonesia magazine that listed the top 40 richest people in Indonesia and who were incidentally entrepreneurs.

A WIB event is never complete without partying. The club closed the year with a mini Christmas feast, birthday celebrations and laughter.

We look forward to a meaningful 2012 and for WIB to scale greater heights.