Going from finance to tech
Andrew Kim came into the CEIBS MBA with a background in business and IT. He’d built a career in finance with a consistent focus on tech.
He decided to pursue an MBA in Shanghai for a few reasons. First, he’d always had a goal to pursue higher education, and felt after seven years career experience the time was right. He’d also visited Shanghai before and loved the city.
After learning about CEIBS—a school that has been slowly climbing the Financial Times Ranking over the years and has now consolidated a place in the global top five—his interest was piqued.
Andrew landed at Amazon in China via Walmart, a company he spent nearly two years with after graduating from the MBA. His role with Walmart was owed to the strength of the CEIBS network. A classmate of his working in the strategy department put in a referral with his hiring manager.
During his time at Walmart, Andrew worked across all of Walmart China. He touched different departments, processes, operations, and was able to build a team of developers, project managers, and lean 6 sigma experts.
How the MBA classroom prepared Andrew for a career with Amazon
At CEIBS, Andrew was dropped into an environment that helped him adapt and thrive when his post-MBA career began. There are 26 countries represented in the cohort, and 33.8% of the class are international students.
“I learned a lot about the Chinese culture on the MBA,” he recalls. “My cohort consisted of about 70% Mandarin speaking individuals familiar with Chinese culture. That’s a big help for international students.
“The biggest help on the professional side would be the management skills. There’s a big focus at CEIBS on how to become a leader.
“There’s a strong focus on servant leadership, and I had the chance to put that into practice in Walmart China. I want to be the best leader I can and motivate people by helping as well as serving them.”
An Amazon recruiter reached out to him after nearly two years at the firm. Andrew says he was very motivated by her, and saw the company was planning to expand greatly over the next five years, so decided to make the switch.
Andrew works a lot in English for Amazon’s private brands. He connects a lot with North America and the EU5 countries—France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK—and says CEIBS is a great platform to launch a career between east and west.
That’s what makes CEIBS MBAs attractive to Amazon.
“They’re looking for lots of international talent and people with international exposure,” Andrew says, “and CEIBS brings that. The pool of students is so diverse, and I think that’s what makes CEIBS MBAs very attractive.”
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