Charting New Horizons Across the World——Nick Johnstone | FMBA

1

I've been working in China for quite some time. I started working in engineering, producing water pumps, and then I switched to telecom network devices. About 5 years ago, I started working for myself, mostly in project management for product development, products going into assembly and manufacture. 

Having worked for myself for some time, I have found some deficiencies in my knowledge gaps that I really want to fill. I have come to a point in my career where I feel quite steady but there needs to be some additional input from outside that is really going to accelerate me to the next level. Studying again and giving myself a bit of a reset help me to look at my career and my business from more of an exterior point of view that may allow me to move forward in new directions or accelerate my path in the current direction.

2

For me, the biggest consideration when looking for a place to continue my studies was that I wanted to get a first-class education from first-class educators; and I knew that Fudan would provide that. I wanted to come out with a network of peers that is going to excel me through the rest of my career.

3

I chose a finance-centric MBA course over a broader MBA because I feel I have the experience for operation. Having worked in engineering and running my own business for quite some time, I feel that my main knowledge deficiency is more in the financial area and my future career goals are financially oriented, so it made sense to focus my MBA around finance. And I've always thought that if you want to really know how the world works, follow the money.

5

I think the biggest difference between the Fanhai MBA and my undergraduate course is just how interactive the classes are; always engaged, always being asked questions, working with classmates, or having conversations directly with the professors about the topics at hand is always exciting, always intellectually stimulating to attend every class.

Finance and economics are global topics and the global language is English; it is a big plus that our classes are taught in English by international professors all with huge renown in their field.

6

My classmates come from a wide variety of industries and our class size is ideal, not too large, not too small for these really interactive discussions. Coming from different backgrounds, we all approach problems with different viewpoints. Being able to engage in these discussions brings a huge variety of backgrounds, not just from finance but from law, engineering, and marketing, so many different backgrounds that we have in the class that provide a broad view and understanding of the world. The combination of these different viewpoints brings a complete and comprehensive understanding of all the topics that we discuss.

7

For our courses, we bring international knowledge and understanding but we look at local cases. I think this is one of the biggest differences between studying in China compared to studying abroad; abroad, many people don't know a lot about China. It is a huge advantage to study it from within.

8

I think the professor who spoke to me the most was Professor Zhu Lei. She taught financial accounting in our first module. She really changed my view of accounting from being straight down the line and really data entry and very rule-based to being quite intricate and scientific. There is a lot you can gain from a very deep understanding of looking at accounts; that gives you a look behind the curtain of a company and that knowledge is extraordinarily important if you're going to ever get to a high level.