Coming from a middle-class family in India, it is never an easy decision to quit your job to pursue higher education, especially if you have a young family. Also, after working for eight years, I had doubts about how much I would be able to shift my orientation to a classroom model of learning. What finally tilted the scales was the opportunity to meet and work with people from different industries, functions, and cultures. Because, if my experience of working in diverse geographies in different parts of the world has taught me anything, it is this: when the chips are down, your hard skills do not give you much of an edge, and the only thing that comes handy is how well you can leverage your people network.
Even before reaching the IIMB campus, I was browsing the school’s website (www.iimb.ac.in) and came to know about the Global Network for Advanced Management, a network of 32 top-notch B-schools that IIMB is part of. The idea seemed fantastic that 32 of the top business schools from across the world can collaborate on such a scale to leverage their resources to provide a platform for future leaders to keep pace with the times. With markets becoming global and stakeholders coming from all corners of the map, it is of utmost importance today that we understand each other better. I decided I would really like to participate in a Global Network Week (GNW) at one of these network schools.
And then, one day, came the chance for me to become the Student Ambassador for IIMB on the Global Network. I am still not sure if I will be able to take part in a Global Network Week, as there are many criteria to make it to one (and one of them being my grades!), but I can still get the opportunity to work with other ambassadors from the peer schools. Learning becomes gratifying only when we can assimilate and apply what we learn. I can work on different collaborative projects that are underway, and a project like this is the very definition of symbiotic knowledge sharing.
Serving as the Student Ambassador for IIMB will give me the opportunity to lead, co-lead, or support different initiatives to boost awareness of, and participation in, the Global Network and support the Global Network’s mission. You can be sure I will keep you posted on my new journey!
