Junjie Crisante has put his stellar career on hold for two years to study a full-time MBA at Australia’s Melbourne Business School, with a scholarship from the Asian Development Bank.
To enrol, he left behind a senior project management role with Hewlett-Packard (HP), the multinational IT giant, which he had built up since entering the company in 2007.
He has been based in Manila, in the Philippines, for his entire career with HP, and describes the Filipino working culture as “eating, karaoke and family”.
He thinks there are distinct advantages to studying at business school in Australia, such as the diversity of the MBS cohort. When he graduates, he wants to work in the tech or fast-moving consumer goods sectors.
”I believe that without my MBA I would still have that parochial mind-set when approaching business problems. The entire MBA journey has challenged my previous ways of thinking – my consistent interactions with my classmates and networking with really interesting MBA alumni have made me see the world in a way I could never have imagined alone.”
