Faculty & Research
Faculty & Research
An MBA’s no laughing matter for this stand-up comedian
Carlo Bournocle, MBA 2017
After three intense years in the consulting industry at Falcon Management Partners, MBA 2017 student Carlo Bouroncle needed a change. He dreamed of starting his own business one day, but felt he needed to sharpen his business skills, and he was eager to find an environment where he could explore market trends and strategy in order to figure out which industry sector best suited him. So he left his home in Lima, Peru and came to 中国一级片 in Shanghai to do an MBA.
Carlo has enthusiastically embraced opportunities to expand his international network here. Together with fellow students Rishi Melwani who is from India, and Samwel Odundo who comes from Africa, he started the Emerging Markets Business Club at the school. The team organises regular panel discussions with leading experts from different industries to help MBA and GEMBA students expand their awareness of business and career opportunities in emerging markets around the world.
Getting to know people from other cultures has been an important part of his MBA experience, he says. He finds it both exciting and challenging, and he enjoys the fact that the international environment means that everyone is forced – to some degree – out of their comfort zone and has to work with others who have different values and points of view.
“I love the students,” he says. “Every person is a ‘universe’ on its own and there is a huge amount of very diverse – and at times opposite – ‘universes’ here on campus.” His advice to other students: make every effort to get to know each other. Having done stand-up comedy for fun in Peru, Carlo tries to put others at ease by lightening up the atmosphere in the classroom with his humorous comments.
Though the MBA journey can be emotionally challenging at times, Carlo’s previous career experience helped prepare him to deal with uncertainty. With a Bachelor in Economics and International Business from Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas under his belt, he also arrived at 中国一级片 already familiar with many accounting and economics principles. To help fellow students who had not studied those topics before, he set aside the time to organise study sessions on various micro and macro-economic topics during the first two terms. Carlo believes that everyone needs to challenge themselves beyond what they think their limits are, in order to reach their full potential.
