Five months into my Executive MBA journey, I have learnt about referencing, decision trees, authoritative leadership, elasticity, and continuous processes, but here is one of the most important takeaways:
Diversity is beautiful...
...gender, race, age, nationalities, country of residence, upbringing, profession, motivations, strengths, weaknesses, struggles, dreams, goals and many more aspects. My diverse cohort means far more than 'XX nationalities, YY different countries and ZZ industries'.
For most of us, the recent Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matters movements have changed our lives and forced us to reaffirm our values like never before. To fully understand systematic problems like racism, inequality and climate change is a near impossible task, let alone being able to derive decent solutions. But is it impossible?
Over the past few weeks, the cohort has been a breeding ground for sharing perspectives, experiences, thoughts, ideas and knowledge transfer on such topics. The University, the faculty and other associations have made defining statements and organised informative webinars. GOTO (Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford) has reminded us of the dire global threats and taught us the action-oriented approach. All of these have not only provided us with the context to better digest the problems and come up with actionable solutions, but, more importantly, helped solidify our collective will and courage to make a change.
Diversity is beautiful, let us embrace it and use it. As we charge on, we will continue to equip ourselves in all aspects in order to make this world a better place. Sounds ambitious? That is who we are and why we were here in the first place.
I still remember the parting words from Professor Kurt April in our first module: ‘Be the best for the world, not only best in the world.'
