Edward Wang

Yale School of Management

“A solitary traveler seeking serendipity all the time.”

Hometown: Tsingtao, China

Fun Fact About Yourself: I fixed my acrophobia with a 17,500-foot skydive.

Undergraduate School and Major: Economics, Xiamen University

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: China International Capital Corporation, Investment Banking Associate

The Yale School of Management is regarded as a purpose-driven program. What is your mission? How will your MBA at Yale SOM help you fulfill that mission? My mission is to find cutting-edge technologies and facilitate them to make the world better.

What word best describes the Yale SOM MBA students and alumni you’ve met so far and why? Authentic. People from Yale SOM value relationships not for pragmatic reasons, but from mutual belief and kindness. That’s what makes people authentic.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Yale SOM’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? First, Yale has a long history of relationships with China and Chinese people (for more than 100 years), which gives Yale an excellent and unique reputation in China. Second, Yale’s alumni are exceptionally helpful and united. In the long term, I would like to establish my own business in China. These two factors are essential to my career.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Yale SOM? Courses related to Entrepreneurship, VC/PE Club, and The Voices!

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: In 2017, I founded a mutual-help organization in Beijing called The Speaker & Listener Club for people suffering from depression. It has since helped hundreds of people in need. (This is not from my professional career, but the experience was meaningful and fits Yale SOM’s mission well.) Through personal story-sharing events, the Speaker & Listener Club connects people living in the same city with similar emotional experiences and helps them develop friendships and discover the good things in life.

Three years before, in 2014, I had encountered a similar club in Amsterdam, founded by several students from the University of Amsterdam. Immediately, I realized how precious it is for people living in modern cities to be able to express their feelings. When I moved to Beijing for a job, I set up The Speaker & Listener Club and started to operate it after work. In each activity, participants gathered and shared different life stories with each other. As of 2020, we have hosted over 50 club activities and invited philosophers, street singers, cancer patients, and professional travelers to voluntarily share their experiences. We have built partnerships with national psychology organizations, local anti-suicide volunteering programs, and local mutual support groups for depression, trying to help as many people as we can. In the future, we will continue to encourage lives, change lives, and save lives.

How did COVID-19 change your perspective on your career and your life in general? The impact to me is huge. First, I had my job transferred from NYC to Beijing in 2020 during COVID, which greatly changed my work content and the industries that I engaged in. That was a big factor in my decision to pursue an MBA. Second, I observed that the COVID put many people, especially those of low income, in jeopardy, and started to think about why that is and what I can do about it.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what do you hope to do after graduation? To me, an MBA means a chance and space to have self-reflection and to transform myself from a banker into an entrepreneur. After graduation, I want to start my own business in the technology industry, bringing cutting-edge products to the world.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? HBS, Wharton, Stanford, CBS, Booth

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Yale SOM’s MBA program? Be really authentic when you write your essay. An essay that cannot touch you deeply cannot touch anyone else either. And always think of the bigger picture, not just business but the whole society.