It all started with a “Shall we gather all the classmates who are interested to try Thai food together in Cambridge?” We then found ourselves a few weeks later having the opportunity to co-lead the business school’s first ASEAN Business Club (Abbrev. for Association of Southeast Asian Nations), with the encouragement of our classmates. Our class of 2023/2024 saw one of the biggest cohorts of students from Southeast Asia (SEA) and a growing interest in the region in recent years, thus kicking off the start of a Student Interest Group (SIG) to bring people together. Our intention was to create a community where people could bond and interact (with good food of course!), forge connections that can encourage more students from SEA to head to the UK for their business studies and explore future business opportunities in the region.
We kicked off our first entrepreneurship event with Mr. Farhan Firdaus, a partner at Meet Ventures who is based in Indonesia and shared with us his perspective on the SEA start up landscape. Mr. Siddharth Dangi, founder of Mentogram, also joined us over the virtual meeting to share his experiences building his company and the opportunities start up founders can access in SEA.
Recognising the region’s growth and increasing number of students from SEA, we were also heartened to see leading business schools in the UK starting their own SEA-focused student groups within their own schools for the first time. We planned the first kick off mixer event in London, together with student leads from London Business School and University of Oxford and saw a successful turnout at the first event.
Even amidst the busy schedules through the MBA year, we continued to gather informally at restaurants because food is the way to our hearts in SEA!
In the final Easter Term, we planned to organise the next mixer networking event in Cambridge, and it was of great joy and honour to invite our guests from the two other business schools to Selwyn College for a Formal Dinner. The mixer started with us introducing the beauty of Cambridge through games with our guests and the night ended with a beautiful sunset backdrop at Selwyn.
It is a mix of emotions not being able to see our fellow classmates in Cambridge regularly for some good Thai food, as we complete our MBA year, but we are equally excited about the possibilities to catch up with everyone when we are traveling in or to SEA, in future. We look forward to seeing the growth of SEA and more students from the region joining the Cambridge Judge Business School community!
For more about Special Interest Groups and the Cambridge MBA student experience visit our webpages here >