Ining Fu

HEC Paris

“Creative yet practical, passionate yet determined, I am a girl who brings dreams to reality.”

Hometown: Taipei City, Taiwan

Fun Fact About Yourself: I have five cats and I delivered three of them by myself in the middle of the night.

Undergraduate School and Major: UC San Diego, Environmental Chemistry (2009)

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: LongYoung Electronics, Regional Manager

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: A few years ago, I took a position as the sales manager of an extremely new team and new office – it was quite a mess with no set structure. I took me around three months to set up the team, the working standards, and the schedules. From scratch, I designed and delivered the sales tools such as business cards, the company profile, catalogue, and the website. With the set of sales tools and our team cooperation, we exceeded the sales goal by 20 percent the same year.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? ACTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE. Classmates at HEC Paris are not afraid to voice their thoughts and are always active in discussions. As a result of the diverse student body, I am already learning from them and hearing things that amaze me. The culture of HEC Paris advocates team-achievement more than self-achievement –vand this is why all of the classmates I have met respect each other’s opinions and always come together to make a final decision as a team.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? “HEC has graduated more CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies than any other university in Europe, according to the 2017 Times Higher Education Alma Mater Index.”

HEC Paris is a school that cultivates classes of true leaders, and more than 40 percent of students become a CEO or start their own company after graduating. HEC Paris can definitely provide what I am looking for to become a leader in my family business. With the abundant resources from the entrepreneur center and the one and only Leadership series, HEC can train a leader better than any other school can.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? I look forward to joining the Women in Leadership club and the LGBTQ+ most. Not all parts of the world have achieved real gender equality in the working environment. In joining these clubs, I will not only learn about how to make my work environment more inclusive but also know how to support these issues outside of the workplace.

What was the most challenging question you were asked during the admissions process?

“Why this school?”

In my opinion, this was the most challenging and difficult question to answer. Of course, you could just pull out all the information about the school and take advantage of what the website states, but it is still a difficult question to answer.

You can only find so much information from the internet or from stories that alumni tell. The real question is this: in which school do you want to experience the unknown? Each person is special in a way and there is no good or bad school; it is just how well you would fit in. The biggest factor for the MBA experience is your classmates and the people you encounter during your studies. You will not know the real answer until you are already experiencing it!

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career?

Pursuing an MBA was always my plan. In the modern business world, connection is the key to success—the MBA experience is able to provide valuable experience in handling situations involving different kinds of people. On top of that, you meet and get to work with a group of intelligent classmates.

After five years of working experience, being managed and managing people, I am finally ready to learn more about the business world in detail. Having enough experience in different situations in mind, I will be able to learn accordingly during the MBA program. I have encountered a point where I felt like I needed more knowledge and practices to grow and improve at work. As a result, I decided that it is the right time to pursue an MBA in order to take a greater leap after graduating.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? I applied to Cambridge Judge, Manchester AMBS, SDA Bocconi, and NYU, but HEC Paris was my top choice.

How did you determine your fit at various schools? One thing about HEC Paris is that the school is extremely good at promoting itself. The faculty, the alumni, and the students are all proud of being a part of the school. Through the communications with the admissions team and by reading the articles that I found online, each and every word sent out a message of unity and pride. The school and the student body complement each other— the more you take pride in your school, the more the school can support you with its prestige. I’ve been looking through posts on Instagram— the events, the smiles on the students’ faces –it really looks like a big family.

When it comes to the logical decisions, it’s the location, the rankings, your classmates, work opportunities, and faculty. I used websites such as ClearAdmit, QS Ranking, GMAT Club, etc. for research. The ranking and faculty group are pretty straightforward, so it was the program that differs. I was looking for a one-year program and HEC Paris has a program length of a bit more than a year…which was perfect. Also, since I plan to return to Asia after pursuing the degree, I would like to live in a different region than I did before. I want to experience not only the culture of the school but also the culture of Paris and France and Europe—the fashion, the food, the language.

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? When I was in Middle school, I saw a big fish with its stomach wide open laying on the beach, plastic wastes coming out from its stomach. I could not get the image out of my head for years. I wondered why those cute animals were dying for what humans did. From that moment, I have decided that no matter where I am or what I become, I will devote a part of me to environmental and animal shelter preservation—my personal aspiration.

I majored in Environmental Chemistry in college and hope to establish a non-profit organization in the future dedicated to animals in need. I want to do more for the unspoken world and fix the damage humans have done to nature as much as possible.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? I will have already expanded my family business into different areas of the world in ten years. I will be starting a non-profit organization to support stray animals and orphans in Taiwan as social responsibility is an important topic and I hope to make the world a better place.