Olivia did her Global MBA abroad at SP Jain School of Global Management, Australia.
Olivia Marzuki currently lives in Singapore, where she works as a senior journalist at Channel NewsAsia, part of MediaCorp. I wanted to find out more about her time studying for her Global MBA abroad, so I asked her to introduce herself.
“Hi, I’m Olivia. I was enrolled at SP Jain School of Global Management in 2018. The Global MBA program included travel around the world, to three different cities. Originally I’m from Jakarta, Indonesia, but I did my undergraduate degree in New Zealand. I worked for various organisations, including a bank and the Australian State Government of Queensland’s Trade & Investment Office, before joining TV. I’ve travelled quite a bit, I guess! I would consider myself a global citizen.”
Why study a Global MBA abroad?
“I was busy enjoying my life and working in interesting jobs, but I wanted to do further study so I always kept it in the back of my mind. One day I received a great offer – to apply for an international student scholarship from SP Jain. So I just gave it a try, and I got pretty much full scholarship! Because it’s a very global program and includes studying in three different cities as part of the course, I didn’t think twice!
“Having spent most of my working life in business journalism, I felt that a business-related masters would enrich my knowledge and sharpen my skills. And, in fact, I found the course very effective. SP Jain really opened my horizons. The course brought me back to the core fundamentals of business – profit and loss, balance statements, that kind of thing. Things I didn’t really study in my undergrad years. Studying a Global MBA abroad really helped sharpen my business journalism work professionally.”
Check out our reasons why you should complete an MBA programme.
The SP Jain Global MBA – 1 course, 3 cities
“Studying my Global MBA abroad exposed me to how business is done in different international continents – the Middle East, Australia and Asia. This gave me a new perspective on how to approach things and taught me to take things like cultural nuances into consideration. Now, because I have been there, I know how things are done, so it really gave me a different perspective. And it makes me a global citizen.
“I don’t see any other universities doing the same type of model. SP Jain claims to be one of the top four universities offering this kind of one-year international MBA program. So they’re right up there at the top of the list of Forbes ranking. We went to Dubai for the first semester, January to April. Then four months in Sydney for the second semester. And finally, we went to Singapore to complete the final semester. This gave me the opportunity to find a job in Singapore, and that’s where I’m still working now.
From Dubai to Sydney to Singapore
“Dubai was very interesting. We went there in January so it wasn’t that hot, but it was becoming warmer. It was interesting because Dubai starts the week on a Sunday so their weekends are Friday and Saturday. The day seems longer there for some reason and there is sand everywhere, so we were always covered from head to toe! We were taken on excursions as part of the tuition, including a desert safari trip and a trip to Ferrari World. They took us to places outside of the classroom, which we really enjoyed. In Sydney, I rented a vehicle and headed out to the beautiful countryside of New South Wales – to Wollongong and the beaches. In Singapore, I was working to complete my MBA that’s where I started looking for a job.
“I think the Global MBA abroad program was great because it was challenging. As a business journalist, I am quite well versed in business topics, so all of the case studies were a walk in the park for me. But there are parts of business studies that I found difficult, like corporate finance because I’m not very strong with numbers and mathematics. I felt like I was really starting from zero because I had never studied corporate finance or accounting before. At the end of the day, I learned about new fields in business and gained a lot from the experience.”
Find out more about Olivia’s life as a TV Journalist here.
