September 30, 2020. Shanghai – The CEIBS MBA Healthcare Club has been one of the most active student-run clubs in recent years. While 7% of the MBA2021 cohort came from the healthcare background, the other 93% were curious to learn more from their peers about an industry that is one of the most popular amongst CEIBS graduates. Soon after the commencement of their MBA programme in August 2019, Yijia Fan, Dai Sasaki and Echo Jin came together to lead with a promise to make the healthcare club a long-term platform to serve, share and collaborate. The team was unanimously elected by their peers to lead the club. Over the following year, Yijia, Dai and Echo, with support from their classmates Brent Jia, Emma Sun, Fox Zhang, and Yanni Wang, would go on to organise eight big events for their cohort.

Peer sharing: Healthcare industry overview and prospects

As the team already possessed rich experience in healthcare, the very first session they organised was to tell their classmates more about the industry. Yijia, Dai and Echo – along with Brent, Emma, Fox and Yanni – shared their own stories from the healthcare industry and enlightened the cohort about how the industry is structured. They also shared why the healthcare industry is a very exciting industry to work in and identified the possible career paths MBA graduates can take, including for those coming from non-healthcare backgrounds. The sharing session helped the team establish a precedent for the events that followed.

At the crossroads of healthcare and finance: Healthcare investment workshop

The next event explored the crossroads of healthcare and finance. To conduct the workshop, the team invited two healthcare investment veterans, CEIBS EMBA alumnus Tony Zhou, VP at Fosun Healthcare Holdings, and Dong Zheng, a Business Partner at GITA Investment Group. The event answered four critical issues:

1. Transiting from the healthcare industry to healthcare investment
2. An investor’s perspective on digging deeper into the healthcare industry
3. Trends and opportunities in healthcare investment
4. Investment opportunities in the Shanghai Stock Exchange Science and Technology Innovation Board (STAR) market

Integrated marketing for value creation in the healthcare industry

CEIBS EMBA alumnus Li Yao has been serving as a mentor to MBA students for eight years now, winning the best mentor award three times. He has over 32 years of experience working in multinational corporations, most recently as VP of Xi’an Janssen Pharmaceutical. So when Li Yao was invited to speak to the cohort, he had a lot of knowledge to share. He spoke in detail about the basic logic of enterprise operations, the definition of integrated marketing and value chain management. The biggest takeaway for the cohort was to that the objective of marketing is to convert social needs into profitable opportunities. The event was also awarded the best event of Term 2.

The most important technological progress of our lifetime: Stem cell technology

Together with CEIBS mentor Fan Bo, the club invited Eric Xie, a senior investor in the healthcare industry and the founder of a research institute which specialises in the clinical research and international co-operation of stem cells and immune cells, to talk about the prospects, milestones and status in the development of stem cell applications.

Leadership development programmes in healthcare companies

The club also invited CEIBS alum Richard Zhou (MBA2011) to speak to the cohort. Post-MBA, Richard has worked at Johnson & Johnson and Fosun, and is now the HR Director at Senyi Tech, a Sequoia, GGV and Tencent-funded medical AI start-up. As an HR Director himself, Richard spoke about different career options in the healthcare industry. The club also invited their seniors from MBA2020 who got LDP offers at healthcare companies to share their stories and interview success tips.

A post-COVID-19 framework for the healthcare industry in China and recent policy updates

As the world slipped into uncertainty with the spread of COVID-19, a lot changed overnight. Yijia, together with her classmates Yanni and Nathan, took it upon themselves to tell their classmates about the structure of healthcare industry in China and what the most recent policy changes now mean. In addition, another member of the MBA2021 cohort, Dr. Dong Suo, spoke about human immunology, cancers, viruses, antibodies and vaccines to give everyone a clearer picture of what the world was facing. The event was awarded the best event for Terms 3 & 4.

Cracking the healthcare interview

Next up was some peer training for interviews. As the cohort started to receive interviews for internships, Emma Sun (former HR at Bayer) shared some critical interview skills. Jessica Liu, who had recently been selected for a summer internship at Eli Lilly, also shared her successful experience.

Visit to Eli Lilly

The final event of the year was a visit to Eli Lilly’s offices in Shanghai. The cohort had the opportunity to directly engage with the recruits there. The visit also included a lecture on China’s healthcare policy reform by Mr. Guo, Market Access Director at Eli Lilly.

The road ahead

After one year of serving, sharing, and collaborating at the CEIBS MBA Healthcare Club, Yijia and her team are proud of the legacy they will be leaving behind for future students. Recognising their efforts, the club was awarded the Student Committee’s award for the best student club. What makes the whole experience more rewarding is that the overall competitiveness of the batch in terms of job searching and career development has been enhanced. Many students from MBA2021 have secured internship opportunities in the healthcare industry, with most of them having no prior healthcare experience.

The team also has some regrets. If there was no COVID-19, they would have hosted a Healthcare Investment Forum and a big reunion of healthcare club members from the previous ten batches. However, they believe that future clubs can build upon what they have done to bring the MBA healthcare community closer together.