Stella Jin

China Europe International Business School (CEIBS)

“A mission-driven and adventurous woman leader, wishing to make positive impact.”

Hometown: Shanghai, China

Fun Fact About Yourself: I was a rebellious skateboarder and broke my front teeth at the age of nine. After that, I did all kinds of sports, including scuba diving, bungee jumping and skydiving, but never touched skateboarding again. However, 20 years later, after I became a CEIBS MBA candidate, I found the adventurous myself back and started to skateboard again.

Undergraduate School and Major:

Mechanical Engineering – Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering – University of Michigan

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Strategic Business Development Manager, Schneider Electric

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of the MBA curriculum that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? I was attracted by the outstanding alumni network at CEIBS. Especially in China, I found that lots of people whom I admired turned out to be CEIBS alumni. This included lots of senior leaders that I admired in various industries, as well as many entrepreneurs. They were my role models, whose stories inspired me a lot, and I hope one day I can become one of them. At the moment when I started to think about career transition, CEIBS naturally became my first choice.

CEIBS is known for “China Depth, Global Breadth.” What is the biggest appeal of earning an MBA in China? I truly believe that for the coming decades China will be a global leader with exceptional potential and outstanding business performance. Choosing a program in China, in the city where I was born, will bring me better insights and exposure to local characteristics.

What club, class, or tradition are you most looking forward to at CEIBS? I’m running for the Women’s Leadership Club. I’m glad to see 50% of students in our batch are women. However, in most target industries for MBA candidates (tech, finance, etc.), the proportion of women leaders is still far from balanced. I’ll try my best to create an environment where women can help each other and embrace their gender identity.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I was responsible for promoting sales performance in the real estate industry, in which I needed to cooperate with 40 sales managers, most of who were male, aggressive, and senior to me in terms of age and job grades. Instead of asserting dominance, I approached the team in a more skillful way. I aligned the goal of the whole team from the beginning, leveraged cross-functional resources to empower the team, utilized my analytical skills to provide a strategic view, and built a close community in which they had healthy competitions. At last, the program was successfully completed with a growth rate four times the original target. Thanks to this task, I had the opportunity to learn about leadership, to drive a large program and to cooperate with senior team members.

What do you hope to do after earning your MBA and why will that be significant? Working for a global company focusing on energy management, I have become increasingly aware of the importance of climate protection and sustainability. Through the MBA journey, I hope to prepare myself better to make a bigger impact on the world. My aim is to explore what sustainability can bring to different industries. It could either be impact investing, or corporate sustainability strategies.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into the CEIBS MBA program? I would suggest a deep reflection before applying. I took a long time thinking about what I really wanted, including my strengths, weaknesses, long-term goals, and my inner motivators. It helped me build up a clear structure in my essays, but more importantly, it helped me understand what kind of person I really wanted to be and saved lots of efforts by eliminating disturbing temptations and only focusing on the most important ones.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE CEIBS MBA CLASS OF 2023