International Lead Week - Southeast Asia

Each year during winter break students at Goizueta have the opportunity to participate in an International Lead Week. This year we had the chance to choose between four international trips to India, South America, Southeast Asia, and China. I decided to choose the trip to Southeast Asia during which I was able to visit Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia.
The key goal for these international trips is to expose Goizueta students to international business, cultures, and people. The trip to Southeast Asia was lead by Dr. Phil Zerillo. Dr Z (as he is better known) is a marketing professor that has been guiding students through this part of the world for a number of years. His experience with the cultures and numerous contacts made the trip extremely fun, informative, and valuable.
In Thailand, Dr. Z set up a number of visits to local companies like the Big C International and FlyNow. Each company welcomed us with open arms and provided a behind the scenes look at how business is conducted in Thailand.
We also had the opportunity to visit Thammasat University. Thammasat is Thailand’s oldest English based business degree program. During our visit we heard from two distinguished professors. Dr Ruth Banayanomong who spoke to us about “Logistics and the Thai Economy: the Road Forward for ASEAN”. He provided a great perspective on the challenges faced by Thailand to develop an infrastructure to become the hub for business in Southeast Asia.
Next we heard from William Randall on “Getting Started in Thailand: How to Do Business”. At the exact time he was explaining the laws regarding foreign investment and business ownership in Thailand there was a major announcement by the government changing the rights of foreigners to own businesses in Thailand. As you can imagine, Mr. Randall was worried about how those changes were going to impact his own stake in a marketing business he had developed over a number of years. Talk about being in the middle of history and business.
After Thailand we flew down to Singapore where we had the opportunity to visit the U.S. Embassy and the port of Singapore. At the embassy we were welcomed by ambassador Lavin and provided an overview on the current relationship between the United States and Singapore. Singapore has a very strong government that does a great job in protecting intellectual property for the thousands of international companies that have decided to establish offices in that country. In addition, the government has done a commendable job to limit corruption in government which affects many of the countries in Southeast Asia.
The visit to the port of Singapore was eye-opening. We had the opportunity to go to PSA’s corporate headquarters and gain an understanding of just how quickly the port has grown over the last few decades, and how it has become the second busiest port in the world. As a quick side note, PSA provides port operation for the port of Singapore and a number of port facilities around the globe. PSA relies on very large information systems to manage the complexity of scheduling over 60, 000 containers per day at just the Port of Singapore.
The last leg of our trip took us on a bus ride from Singapore, through half of Malaysia, to the city of Kuala Lumpur. While in Kuala Lumpur we had the opportunity to visit the Petronas Towers. The towers are truly a work of art, especially at night. Until 2003 the Petronas Towers were the tallest buildings on earth. The distinct honor of the tallest building on earth is now held by Taipei 101 in Taiwan. As a quick trivia fact, the Petronas towers are still considered the world’s tallest twin towers.
Malaysia was a fascinating country to visit also because of the strong influence of the religion of Islam on the government, culture, and architecture. Having lived all of my life in predominantly Christian countries (Mexico and U.S), I enjoyed learning more about their religion and way of life.
To wrap it up, I would like to add that we had ample time to visit, socialize and partake in local culture of our choice during the trip. I was also very fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet a number of students outside of my current MBA Class of 2008 during the trip. I develop friendships with students from the MBA Class of 2007 and the One Year MBA’s that are now part of that class. I would encourage anyone that decides to attend Goizueta to sign up for the International Lead Week experience.

Bernie Traywick
Goizueta Business School
MBA Class of 2008