This MBA-Led Startup Is Rebuilding Bridges Between The U.S. & China, One Trek At A Time

U.S.-China relations are tense, leading many U.S. business schools to back away — at least temporarily — from on-the-ground engagement in China. Two MBA alumni are quietly working, in a small way, to reverse that trend.

Through their startup, Noice China, Sharon Zhao of Wharton and Leah Wang of Kellogg-Guanghua are helping American MBA students experience China firsthand through immersive, small-group treks that blend culture, business, and tough conversations. It’s not big, and it’s not flashy — but it’s working.

“We’re not here to solve geopolitics,” Zhao says. “We just want students to see the real China for themselves.”

UNDOING THE FREEZE

Zhao and Wang launched Noice China in 2023 after graduating from their respective MBA programs. Both had spent significant time in the U.S. and China and had watched with frustration as pandemic travel bans and rising political tensions slowly erased China from the itinerary of global business education.

“Before COVID, it was almost expected that top MBA students would spend time in China — whether through a trek, an internship, or an academic exchange,” Wang tells Poets&Quants. “Now, that bridge was gone.”

At first, they weren’t thinking about building a business. It started with a single request from Wharton students hoping to revive a cultural trek to China. The program Zhao and Wang organized brought students through Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shanghai. From there, word spread quickly.

In spring 2025, Kellogg sent two groups: a 54-student healthcare-focused trek, and a cultural immersion trip for 68 students—nearly all visiting China for the first time. More programs followed at Boothand Harvard, with Stanford and Tuck scheduled for late 2025.
Noice isn’t reinventing the MBA trek. But it is helping schools remember how to run one.

INSIDE THE CHINA TREK EXPERIENCE

A typical Noice China trek isn’t about checking boxes. While students see major sites like the Great Wall and the Bund, they also spend time in places not typically found on the tourist circuit.

In Beijing, students navigate hutong alleyways and cook dumplings with families who’ve lived there for generations. In Chengdu, they visit matchmaking parks where parents advertise their children’s profiles. In Shanghai, they meet with young entrepreneurs and local alumni to talk business, life, and everything in between.

The experience is designed to shift perceptions, challenge assumptions, and build understanding. That includes space for candid, sometimes uncomfortable conversations — about social climate, generational change, and the future of China’s global role.

Helping guide those conversations are what Noice China calls “cultural guides”: former MBAs, foreign correspondents, academics, and long-time China hands who join the trips not as tour leaders but as peer mentors.

“They help students ask the right questions — and hear the full answers,” Zhao says.

SUPPORT FROM THE GROUND UP

At Kellogg, the school’s China engagement has long been a priority. With more than 1,600 alumni in the country and over 500 in Shanghai alone, the school considers China too important to ignore — even as other institutions pull back.

“Our dean has been very clear,” says Dicky Kwok, who helps run Kellogg’s China operations. “If we want our students to understand the global economy, we can’t leave China out of the picture.”

But post-pandemic, organizing these trips has required new partnerships. For the healthcare trek, Noice China coordinated transportation, site visits, and local logistics across multiple cities — while adapting to an academic curriculum led by Professor Craig Garthwaite.

“It’s not easy to plan a course across a health system as complex and opaque as China’s,” Kwok says. “But they pulled it off. They’re small, but they’re sharp.”

Students in both Kellogg groups were visibly changed by the experience, he adds. “They came away asking better questions, seeing China with clearer eyes. And that’s exactly what we’re hoping for.”

NOT A MOVEMENT — BUT A START

Zhao and Wang are careful not to oversell what they’ve built. Noice China is still a small operation, with about 20 contractors and contributors, many of whom work part-time while holding jobs in tech, consulting, or academia.

But their model is resonating — particularly with schools looking to cautiously re-engage. The treks are low-profile but high-impact, giving MBA programs a way to rebuild cross-border learning without relying on long-term institutional partnerships or in-country campuses.

Their success so far has come through word of mouth. One trek leads to another. Student organizers pass planning materials to the next class. Faculty and administrators make quiet referrals. Repeat business has become the norm.

“We’re not trying to scale aggressively,” Zhao says. “We care more about doing it well.”

LEADERSHIP IN THE MOUNTAINS

Alongside its cultural and academic offerings, Noice China has quietly developed a third pillar: outdoor leadership programming. These multi-day trips take students far off the beaten path — into the mountains of southwestern China, where hiking, cultural exchange, and personal development intersect.

Partnering with Peking University, Zhao and Wang have led two such treks, each with around 20 students. Participants spend six days hiking through minority villages, learning about local traditions, dancing with elders, and confronting physical and emotional limits along the way.

“These are some of the most meaningful trips we’ve ever done,” Wang says. “We’ve seen introverted students find their voice, skeptical students open up to new ideas. It’s hard to explain, but something shifts out there.”

Peking University students have asked them to bring the program back for a third year — and the duo plans to do so in the summer, when international programs quiet down.

A MODEST RECONNECTION

In an era of loud political rhetoric, what Noice China offers is quiet, grounded, and deliberate. It’s not a revolution in business education. It’s not trying to be.

But it is a reminder that progress doesn’t always come through big gestures. Sometimes, it’s a dumpling lesson in a Beijing alley. A chat with a healthcare CEO in Shanghai. A conversation about values on a mountainside in Yunnan.

“There’s so much we miss when we talk about China but never talk to China,” Zhao says. “We’re just trying to open that door again — for those willing to walk through it.”

DON’T MISS LIFE AS AN ELITE MBA’s PARTNER and THIS COMPANY WANTS TO INTRODUCE B-SCHOOLS TO LATIN AMERICA, ONE LUXURY MBA TREK AT A TIME

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