Meet The CEIBS MBA Class Of 2021

Jan-Peter Boeckstiegel 

CEIBS (China Europe International Business School)

Tall, energetic. I went from small-town Germany to living internationally with a curiosity for languages and learning.

Hometown: Loehne, Germany 

Fun Fact about Yourself: I lived in a Colombian hair salon for a year.

Undergraduate School and Major: Harvard University – Social Studies

Most Recent Employer and Job Title:  McKinsey & Co. – Fellow Senior Associate

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: It was overcoming my inner hesitations and external expectations to accept the challenge of my first job. I worked in a relatively undefined, highly entrepreneurial role as the US head of a German start-up – the best lessons for later successes in my consulting career.

What is the biggest appeal of earning an MBA in China? Raw, first-hand exposure to and experience with Chinese perspectives and approaches. It is living alongside Chinese students on campus, meeting Chinese business leaders and companies, and experiencing what it means to be a customer, co-worker, and manager in China, in the classroom and in the “real world” beyond.

What quality best describes your MBA classmates and why? A diversity of backgrounds. There are classmates who have only worked in China or only abroad and everything in between. Besides the more “standard profiles”, the class has medical professionals, ex-army personnel, people who worked in Chinese media and the government, people who started their own companies – all of which makes for fruitful conversations.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of the MBA curriculum or activities that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? As for the curriculum, I chose CEIBS especially for its elective courses with a China focus, like the domestic travel module to Nanjing as well as the Integrated China Strategy Project (ICSP) that gives students an opportunity to work with a Chinese company or a multinational in a Chinese context. Additionally, I relished the opportunity to learn Chinese alongside other MBAs and to participate in CEIBS’ executive forums.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? INSEAD, MIT, HBS, Stanford GSB

What do you see yourself doing ten years from now? I plan to have my own business then or work in a technology company that I helped grow from start-up on – this is not location-bound, so maybe even still in China.