A World of Difference
AJ Manasurangkul thinks international experiences are important for the growth of his career. That’s why he moved to Thailand to work as a financial analyst for Toyota after graduating from Villanova University with a degree in economics.
So when Manasurangkul, now a full-time MBA student at Lehigh, heard about the Martindale MBA Fellows, he jumped at the opportunity to study abroad in England.
The Fellows program is a unique academic exchange program with the University of Nottingham. While in England, students met with senior executives while networking with their counterparts from the university. To learn more about their trip, click here.
Manasurangkul is concentrating in supply chain management, so he was excited about touring the Boots facility, a contract manufacturer that works as the middle man for the popular British pharmacy chain. He enjoyed being able to see the product transform from raw material to finished good.
He was also interested to see how corporate cultures differed across various companies such as Boots, the German-based company Siemens, and Standard Chartered Bank, which conducts the majority of its business in Asia. The focus of the experience was corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the students also learned that British companies practice CSR differently than American ones.
“In the UK, it’s more implicit and ingrained in the company culture, whereas it’s a newer concept in the U.S.,” says Manasurangkul. “We learned about the theories of corporate social responsibility, but it was eye-opening to see it actually put into practice and to be able to speak to top executives and discover how they chose their CSR projects.”
But his favorite part of the trip was getting to know his classmates better.
“This experience pulled my entire MBA experience together by letting me form relationships outside the classroom, as well as getting to meet CEOs and CFOs and to see the UK. It completed the program for me.”