EMF 2022 Yifan Peng: Beginning from Ordinary and Booming in Brilliance - FISF Alumni Class Liaison Series | Alumni

Release time：2025-02-18    

Class liaisons are important envoys of connection between the Alma Mater and alumni and among alumni. Your class liaison may be an old friend you are quite familiar with, or just a nodding acquaintance. Today please join us and get to know about him or her. Hope we can ascend the steps along the way and remain true to our original aspiration in the next ten, twenty and thirty years!

- FISF Alumni Class Liaison Series

Yifan Peng

EMF Master

2022 Alumna

State-owned Enterprise

In this sophisticated world, everyone has their unique way to observe life. For Yifan Peng, she can always spot extraordinary features in ordinary objects from her exquisite perspective, and do every little thing to the best in a down-to-earth way.

Being straightforward, down-to-earth and ISTJ are the three keywords she uses to describe herself. From FISF to State Grid, her life trajectory has been not just a journey of pursuing studies and setting sail in her career, but more importantly a process of constant observation, reflection and growth.

Today, let’s approach Yifan Peng, a girl with “neither a feeling of looseness nor exhaustion by internal strife”, and listen to her story of progress and perception of life along the journey based on her choices.

1 Life is a “binary tree” of choices.

“Life is like a continuously growing ‘binary tree’”, so said Yifan Peng in a simile when she talked of her study-pursuing and career-seeking experience.

Her choice of entering the EMF Program of FISF came from a camp experience she took part in. “The extremely warm feeling it gave me is still vivid in my memory,” she recalled, “I found FISF not only a business school with profound professionalism, but a big family full of humanistic concern.” The teachers cared for each of their students from the bottom of their heart, and senior students were selfless to share their experience with us. This kind of close connection between the school and us students was truly touching. In addition, as a kid growing and studying in the northern region, Peng had some expectations on the southern city Shanghai itself, “Shanghai is a dynamic and fashionable city.”

When it came to the most impressive professional course, she mentioned the Causal Inference by Professor Haihan Tang, “This course completely turned over my original cognition of mathematical statistics. Teacher Tang was good at illustrating abstruse theoretical knowledge with lively social research cases, and offered us practical training based on Stata and other quantitative tools. Such research methods and data analysis skills were of great benefit to me when composing my graduation thesis.”

Group photo of 2024 EMF Graduation Party

Autumn recruitment was another critical node for the “binary tree” of her life. For Yifan Peng, this experience was not an ordinary job-seeking process, but a deep-going journey of self-awareness. At that time, there were two conflicting voices in her inner heart: on one hand, most of her internship experiences were about the primary market and she was clearly aware that financial institutions like investment banks could give her a very sharp path of growth and a considerable amount of income; while on the other, she realized a new and true need in her heart during the internship. “I didn’t really prefer jobs like that.” In the end, she followed her inner passion and chose a quite different career path.

Though she had embarked on a seemingly ideal life journey, just like most people, Yifan Peng also felt anxious about uncertainties at each crossing, wondering if she had made the right choice or not. But looking back from now, she had a different feeling, “Life is actually like a ‘binary tree’. Each result comes from the superposition of numerous choices, so one single choice may be of certain importance or maybe not. You just need to move on step by step after practically making a choice.” So far, she has gradually learned to deliberately cease meaningless regrets and exhaustion by internal strife, and instead focus on the path leading forward. “Never beautify the path that you didn’t choose.” she concluded.

2 Newcomer in the career: forge ahead steadily, as efforts will not be in vain.

As a newcomer in the career, Yifan Peng believed her advantages were “paying attention to details, being down-to-earth in work, and doing well in identifying problems and chances in specific work, but sometimes she would also ignore general planning from a more macro perspective due to overly concentrating on practical operation.” She understood that such personality was both an advantage and a challenge in work.

Thanks to job rotation, Peng participated in various kinds of work, including due diligence on overseas investment, post-investment management and group capital operation. She admitted that she was still in the stage of exploration and learning, “Shifting from a market-oriented institution to a state-owned enterprise requires a change in my working thinking, since the two vary a lot in underlying logic. State-owned enterprises lay emphasis on systematic thinking and standardized operation, demanding considerations on factors of various dimensions beyond the business logic.”

Once a predecessor told her, “If you spot something in the system that doesn’t seem so efficient, don’t rush to deny and feel disappointed. These systems have been gradually optimized and improved in long-term practice, which may seem unreasonable for individuals but indeed can generate conducive effects on the operation and long-term development of the entire organization. You just need to first understand before reflecting on how to make improvements.” Such words benefited her a lot, from which she learned that whatever working conditions, it is necessary to balance the ideal situation and the reality and to seek progress in understanding.

Our future is bright and gorgeous!

In work, she especially enjoyed the sense of achievement brought by research work. “Each time I finish a research task; I will gain a special sense of satisfaction. Growing from simple information collection to summarizing truly valuable insights, I am improving my professionalism step by step.”

Having turned from a student to a working adult, it has become the most important subject for her to balance work and life. “The deepest feeling of such identity shift is that time is no longer entirely at my own disposal,” she said, “so every vacation becomes extremely precious. But this change also pushes me to better plan my time so that I can create more values within the limited time.”

3 The philosophy of a “reserved person” with neither a feeling of looseness nor exhaustion by internal strife

As a typical ISTJ person, she always pays more attention to details and realistic issues, which enables her to easily grasp key points in work, but sometimes overly concentrating on details also makes her ignore the general situation. “Therefore, I have long been studying how to find balance between details and the general situation.”

Concerning the many challenges emerging in life and work, she has also gradually developed her own philosophy of life. “In life, many things may carry on in an unexpected way, and there are also some that may linger around when you just want to let them go. So we have to learn to keep focused and not exhaust ourselves by negative emotions”

When asked how she could maintain such a feeling of looseness, Yifan Peng frankly acknowledged that she was indeed not what she seemed to be, and may feel quite anxious and nervous in face of many difficulties. “But I can get relaxed soon afterwards. Once something is completed, I can get out of it quickly whatever the final result and move on to the next one without feeling exhausted for long.”

With this life attitude of “neither a feeling of looseness nor exhaustion by internal strife,” she can always face up to frustrations in work positively. “Sometimes I feel great after completing a task, but often end up receiving many suggestions for revision after submission. At first, I may be a bit upset, yet I’m able to adjust my mindset and take the feedback as precious chances to improve. To me, the ability to recover quickly is a greatly useful quality in work.”

4 “Care for others” is about sincere concern.

Yifan Peng’s passion for voluntary services dates back to her childhood. “I remember my parents taking me to the welfare institution when I was just a little kid. That was the first time that I’d get in touch with exceptional children from a close distance.” she recalled, “When I saw those kids with physical disabilities, I was terrified at first, and even wanted to leave. But then I saw my parents interacting with them naturally, telling stories and playing games together, I slowly let go of fear. My parents taught me with their actual deeds that true voluntary work is not a simple expression of kindness, but to care about others sincerely and stand in others’ shoes.”

The voluntary seed was quietly sown in the little girl’s heart, and has grown blooming flowers as she grew up as an adult. As far as she can remember, one of the most impressive voluntary work was at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, when she volunteered as an Olympic Family Assistant. Beijing, the first city in the world that has hosted both the Summer and Winter Olympics, also held the baton passing ceremony for volunteers in 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Through this inheritance, she was more deeply aware of the value of voluntary services. At the Winter Olympics, she was extremely moved by the purity shown by the old gentleman, as Secretary General of the International Luge Federation, when he moved around and jumped up with joy for the sportsmanship of the athletes during the award ceremony.

Talking about the original aspiration to do voluntary work, Peng also mentioned the appeal of voluntary work itself for her, “I just feel it meaningful, and it shouldn’t be done for the purpose of showing how kind or competent we are.” She modestly said she was still far from becoming an excellent volunteer. Her roommates in college were also a group of girls who were enthusiastic about volunteering, some often donating blood and some serving as medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I have a high esteem for them. They have given me great spiritual support in volunteering.”

This is also the reason why Yifan Peng chose to be an alumni class liaison. She realized that if people did not pay special attention to alumni activities or there was no one especially responsible to hold such activities, they would miss the chances for connection with each other when they have left school and shifted focus to their own respective work and life. “The alumni association is a valuable platform for information sharing where people can exchange opinions on industries and career development as well as many other aspects including life, parenting and education.”

Holding the sincere concern of “care for others,” she wished to be the “blood capillary” to convey the warmth of the school and the connection between the school and the students that she personally felt to each fellow student, “High-quality alumni network can only be constructed through careful management of everyone.”

5 Be a patient observer in the sophisticated world

Yifan Peng is very fond of travelling. As for memorable moments in her memory of trips, she described a extremely film-like scene: It was when she first took a bullet train from Shanghai to Xiamen. She missed the original train but luckily caught up with the next alternate one. Sitting in the crowded dining carriage and listening to the songs of Accusefive, she enjoyed the growing wetness unique to the southern regions while feeling secretly ecstatic about her good luck beyond expectation. “That felt like a bit free-spirited and unrestrained, and also kind of crazy.” she recollected. With a changed schedule and expectation for the unknown intertwined together, that subtle emotion made the seemingly ordinary moment a piece of exceptional memory.

Such acute perception ability is the antenna Yifan Peng uses to embrace the outside world. She tends to understand the world from specific details, and this habit carries on into her work. “Behind each detail there may hide important information,” she said, “no matter it is reading a material, writing a report, communicating with a colleague or attending a meeting, it is always a habitual behavior of mine to watch out for those tiny-looking but important details. Accordingly, sometimes I may appear a little overly meticulous, but in investment-related work, the devil is always in the details.”

As far as Yifan Peng, being an observer is not only to record, but also to understand and develop. “We live in a rapidly changing time, so it’s easy to be swept along by all kinds of information and paces. However, if we can keep the perspective of an observer and feel with our heart every moment, we can stay awake and grasp the essence in the numerous and complicated changes.”

Afterwords: Through trials and tribulations, one is honed to perfection.

“Through trials and tribulations, one is honed to perfection.” is the maxim that Yifan Peng believes in, by which she inspires herself to keep going forward. Talking of this, she added in a shy manner, “Actually I think I’m just an armchair strategist now. Compared to many, I haven’t experienced so many ‘trials and tribulations.”

When asked about suggestions for younger graduates who were looking for jobs right now, she applied the phrase “keep confident.” “Suppose the screening mechanism in the job-seeking process is a function, then the variables involved in the function include not just your ability but also several other factors. To find out what job really suits, you must experience for real and listen to the voice from your inner heart.” At last, she stated seriously, “So please don’t get frustrated and always keep confident!”

Standing at the intersection of finance and real economy, Yifan Peng is exploring extraordinary values in the dribs and drabs of work. Just like her name, beginning from ordinary and booming in brilliance, Peng has been making progress in her pursuit of professionalism. She practiced responsibilities in voluntary services, measures the width of life step by step, and explores the depth of significance with a focused attitude. Just as she said, “there is no path in life that is in vain. Each step we take is a part of our growth.”

“Alumni Class Liaison” Series

Alumni class liaisons are important envoys of connection between the Alma Mater and alumni and among alumni, shouldering great responsibilities for effective communication and long-term contact, and thus playing an indispensable role as the bridge and bond. Each year at the graduation season, over 150 representatives from graduation classes are officially appointed by the Alma Mater as class liaisons, and they will work together with over 2000 predecessors to pass on the glory and responsibility of Fudan the big family.

Over the seven years since establishment, FISF has cultivated a great many students. In 2024, another batch of graduate representatives from Fudan International School of Finance were appointed as class liaisons and became the core power to connect a new session of alumni. At the rejoicing moment of graduation and setting sail on a new journey, we hereby initiate the 2024 Alumni Class Liaison Series Interview, showing to the alumni the elegant demeanor of the new batch of class liaisons and enabling each graduate to know more about the class liaisons around them. As an important bond, class liaisons can further unite the alumni forces, enhance the close relation and in-depth exchanges between the school and alumni and among alumni, and achieve common growth and constant prosperity of the FISF alumni ecosphere.

Enhancing cohesion and connotation, joining hands for win-win progress. May FISF and the alumni ascend the steps along the way and remain true to our original aspiration!