Pursuing Opportunity in the Heart of Asia

Former US President Bill Clinton once observed that the price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change. It’s a sentiment that resonates with Annabellee Chua.

After spending more than three years as a Drilling Engineer in the US multinational energy corporation Chevron based in the Philippines, she wanted a career switch. Her aim then was to equip herself with the necessary skills to be able to work in a less technical role, while seizing the opportunity to further her studies overseas and gain some valuable exposure.

“I was applying to multiple schools in the US and Europe, but realised that Asia is just brimming with growth and activity. Why move away from home when the land of opportunity is here?” says the Singapore Management University (SMU) Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduate, who also holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of The Philippines.

Singapore stood out as the natural choice because of its location in the heart of Asia. Plus, Annabellee anticipated less of a cultural shock arising from her Chinese-Filipino background and spotted an opportunity to brush up on her Mandarin here.

Eventually, she chose SMU for its holistic curriculum, whereby interactive learning is advocated to enable students to find their own voice through presentations, networking, discussions and debates – skills she felt she lacked in her previous roles. After completing her MBA, she graduated from the Lee Kong Chian School of Business (LKCSB) in December 2017.

Since then, Annabellee’s newly acquired skills have proven to be critical in her current role as a senior analyst at McKinsey & Company, where she is part of the Performance Improvement team. Her current scope involves actively engaging colleagues and clients to develop recommendations and business plans for maximising efficiency and results. She says: “I was never comfortable speaking out loud, but the SMU MBA encouraged me to think critically and speak out in a group, and it’s benefited me greatly in my new career.”

Through the MBA programme, Annabellee also learned another important lesson – how to build a compelling narrative. “With every business case, the math is important. You need to know the math behind your business case. But the storytelling is just as important, because without a story, your stakeholders won’t believe you,” she explains.

This lesson was also reiterated during her participation in the 2017 Zurich Enterprise Challenge (ZEC) – where she and a team of 3 other SMU MBA students beat 89 other teams from over 60 countries to emerge as champions. The 2017 ZEC was a six-month-long competition open to postgraduate students from around the world, consisting of three different phases that involve working with multinational companies to design solutions for existing corporate challenges.

In the third and final phase, Annabellee and her teammates, Akshay Tatke, Zhe Hui and Serena Se Eun Park, were one of the two teams that travelled to Edinburgh, Scotland in September 2017. Along with the other finalists from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, they made their pitch at the 2017 Zurich Global Risk Management Summit with the aim of winning the votes of its attendees.

Recalls Annabellee: “The process was exhausting, but when I look back, it was a team effort. We had complementary skills, and we just committed to working at it every weekend between internships and classes.”

Even on a personal front, Annabellee feels that joining the programme has benefitted her greatly by not only giving her a whole new network of friends from around the globe who have lasted way beyond graduation, but it was also where she had the opportunity to meet her significant other. In her own words, she believes that the programme is “a good launch platform to change careers, especially if you, as I do, believe in Asia as the future of business.”