"California’s Silicon Valley seems a world away from China, where I lived for two years building our AIESEC, non-profit, start up operation. The Silicon Valley streets are quiet while cars and guzzling SUV’s cram the highways. Beijing streets are busy with people walking everywhere from early until late. In Beijing many new restaurants and shopping centers lie empty. Despite the dot-com crash and recession, Silicon Valley shopping centers and restaurants are packed and one often waits to get a table.

My lifestyle has changed tremendously. In China I worked from my apartment, constantly traveling and weighed down by 24-7 leadership responsibilities and support needs of my teams. As an AIESEC trainee in the Yahoo! headquarters now I am supported in a corporate environment with tremendous resources and technical support; and teams work 9-5 hours, instead of the erratic hours my AIESEC travel schedule forced. In a company like Yahoo!, hours are more like 8am to 7pm, but at least its regular. Lastly, I have not faced the ongoing political challenges of an ambiguous, slowly developing legal infrastructure, an environment I have missed the challenge of working in.

Our partner the China Youth Center for International Personnel Exchanges supported some of the first AIESEC trainees to China from abroad; and it was incredible to see these few peoples lives change with their exposure to today’s China. Even more rewarding was partnering with the China Scholarship Council negotiating with universities, designing localized exchange programs, reviewing applications, and interviewing many of China’s most talented students from the top Beijing and Shanghai universities to go abroad. Seeing the changes in those Chinese students who undertook AIESEC traineeships abroad was highly motivating. I sent nine trainees from one AIESEC program to the United States, which may sound like a small number; but was not under our programs constraints. We went through great efforts in recruiting the students. To the huge disappointment of many of the hard working Chinese student Interest Group team members, it took some time before we were able to negotiate successfully with both universities and government that students who had voluntarily worked on the AIESEC exchange programs in China should be given preference in applying for the traineeship opportunities abroad. For one year in particular out of my two I managed a large pool of potential trainees, which I was only able to send to the US and, did not have permission to allow to undertake opportunities in other countries they were offered. It was disappointing to be handicapped in our efforts to offer all our services and opportunities to young people as readily as we may do in any other economy, but maintaining positive government relations was priority due to AIESEC’s, non profit status.

Besides recruiting, marketing and getting offer letters from the US, permission from Chinese universities, and visas from the embassy for these students to depart for their US traineeships, I was also working with Chinese volunteer teams to build their skills in AIESEC exchange program management. It was the AIESEC students I worked with in Chinawho changed my life. Just like AIESEC in many other countries around the world I have seen, AIESEC somehow managed to attract some of the most talented and dedicated students in China. The students who became my friends were top of their classes, respected by their professors, excited about the careers they were building, the world they had not yet visited, and wanted to be a part of building sustainable development in their communities, and friendship between cultures. I felt privileged and inspired in my interactions with Chinese youth I had no doubt may go on to play some very positive roles in Chinese society, as other AIESEC alumni have done around the world.

We could see and experience in our work with each other and the learning’s about each others cultures that came from that, how we were already building friendship between nations and peoples, and changing our lives, attitudes and ability to lead. We strove to undertake work inline with our principles, knowing that if we were able to find innovative ways to do this now, we would be able to do this in later leadership roles in our careers. We strove to understand as much of each others cultural communication and working styles as we could and to avoid conflict and misunderstandings, hoping to learn these skills early in AIESEC, to be able to overcome some of history’s mistakes, and emulate positive global leaders. Above all we strove to work as a team and treat each other as equals; though I always admired the incredible work ethic and vision of my Chinese colleagues.

In my work in China I interacted with people of many different cultures. Undertaking our projects and building teams with the Chinese students was most special to me, as through insights into their lives, they brought my academic study of Chinese language and history to life. While training and leading the Chinese students in extending AIESEC partnerships with our multinational supporters to China, I also had opportunities to interact with American, German, European and returned Chinese managers. Hearing stories of expatriate assignments, the 1997 Asia Crisis from the mouths of people who had been a part of it, and what it was like to work in China ten or twenty years earlier were incredible insights. AIESEC received excellent support from expatriate managers in China, many of whom had had a positive experience of the AIESEC exchange program in other countries, and were excited to see the opportunity being offered to Chinese students.