Study Overseas

1. While recognizing that no day is typical, we ask that you describe a representative work day. (300 word limit)

8:00AM:
Arrive at work. Check email messages and check calendar for appointments. Reply to people's messages and confirm the appointments.
8:30AM:
Begin working in the lab. Start a new reaction as planned yesterday and record the experimental details. Observe any new results.
9:30AM:
Meet with the R&D manager to go over today's plan quickly and to make changes if necessary. Discuss progress of the whole project briefly.
10:00AM:
Search chemical database for all the necessary information pertaining to the current reaction. Estimate the possible results of the reaction and design methods to isolate the desired lab product.
11:00AM:
Meet with a supporting group of analytical chemists to discuss the current project. Identify the analytical difficulties for new chemistries. Discuss ways to solve the problem on site.
1:00PM:
Analyze the ongoing reaction's progress. Stop it when ready. Use different methods to try to isolate the desired product.
2:30PM:
Meet with the analytical staff again to analyze the experimental results and reach a conclusion. (Did the reaction work? What should be improved?)
3:30PM:
Meet with the information management staff to discuss the database problem we encountered.
4:00PM:
Plan for tomorrow's reaction.

2. Please describe your most significant leadership experience. Feel free to draw upon work experiences, extracurricular activities, or your personal interactions, describing a period of formal or informal leadership. Please focus less on the specific situation and more on what caused you to be effective. (300 word limit)

While in graduate school at the University of Toledo, my peers elected me president of the Association of Chinese Scholars and Students. Each year the association holds a celebration party for the spring festival New Year among Chinese scholars and students. After becoming president, I initiated the idea to celebrate the New Year with a number of other Asian Student organizations. I envisioned that the event would not only be a cultural revival, but would also be a great chance for cultural exchange among different student bodies and the local community.

I persuaded the leaders of the Hong Kong, Malaysian, and Taiwanese student cultural associations to participate in the joint celebration. In addition, I cajoled university officials into providing the necessary funding, and I invited school officials and prominent local figures. As the event's chairman, I carefully planned how to proceed with the whole project. To keep everyone motivated and efficient, my first order of business was to assign each committee member to an appropriate post according to his or her interests and specialties. I then convened frequent meetings to communicate and help each other with hurdles that we encountered as a team. To keep costs down, I insisted the organization itself do the food preparation and find entertainment programs, rather than outsourcing the projects to a caterer or a deejay. As the celebration approached, I realized I had mobilized the whole Asian student body to work on this project.

By digging up excellent amateur Asian art performers and organizing people to prepare genuine Asian cuisine, I helped make the event a fantastic success. Many local people experienced genuine Asian culture for the first time in their lives. The students enjoyed the whole process, and this celebration became the most memorable event in their study abroad. Through careful planning, organizing and coordinating, I motivated people to solve problems themselves and to help make the event a tremendous success.

3. Recognizing that successful leaders are able to learn from failure, describe a situation in which you failed. (100 word limit) Why did you fail? (200 word limit)

My family runs a private pharmaceutical company in Tianjin, China. In April 2005, I went back to China hoping to assist my family in expanding the business. There were many business issues that I had to deal with, like creating new marketing strategies, negotiating with distributors and local hospitals, consolidating material suppliers, expanding manufacturing operations, and dealing with advertising agencies. Although I put in a great deal of effort, I achieved much less than I had hoped. Even though I met with several firms from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia who were interested in either joint ventures to manufacture and market the product locally or in distributing the product through their networks, I could not reach any deals.

I attribute my inability to expand the business operation and open new markets to my lack of formal business training. In the past few years, I had the opportunity to expose myself to various operations in the pharmaceutical industries in both China and the United States. I supervised a quality control lab in a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in China, and I worked on developing target pharmaceutical products in a biomedical research group at an American university. I have also contributed significantly to the growth and development of a high-tech pharmaceutical company in Silicon Valley. Although I have much in depth professional experience and practical knowledge on managing research-intensive organizations, my lack of comprehensive business and management training impedes my progress. When trying to spearhead the effort to expand market share for my own family's product, I faced too many issues in managing a private enterprise and business operation that I could not use my time effectively and recognized I would need to learn much to properly address this deficiency. In short, I realized my urgent need for top-flight business training.

4. What specifically have you done to help a group or organization change? (300 word limit)

My father invented a new pharmaceutical treatment for nephritis in the late 1990's. The pharmaceutical product presented a great opportunity for our family, although with the opportunity came significant risks. My parents needed to quit their decent and secure jobs to run a private company with an uncertain future in an unproven market. Even though the Chinese political climate at the time encouraged privately owned businesses, the political uncertainty and lack of laws and regulations to protect business owners made my father pause before opening up his own business.

We also expected to encounter problems in dealing with health authorities, in raising funds, and in distributing the product. However, I encouraged my family to start out on their own despite the expected problems, and I helped them analyze the situation. Even though there were a lot of adverse circumstances, I decided that the product was sound. The drug has proven to be safe and very effective in all testing. More importantly, at the time, there were no alternative drugs, and nephritis is a major disease in China. While the risk was great, the potential award made the project worthwhile, and we decided to become a family business in the pharmaceutical industry.

I helped my father build a distribution network using his connections in the local medical community, and I collected data from clinical trials and helped gain approval for the drug from the local health authority. In addition, I helped my family raise funds from our relatives and friends and even my college classmates to cover the startup costs. After I graduated from college, I joined the family business and opened up more distribution channels. I then decided to come to the United States to study pharmaceutical science with the goal of improving our technology. To help introduce the drug into the global market, I made contacts with interested parties from Taiwan and Malaysia to open up other markets. Due to my efforts and determination, the drug has become the most popular product combating nephritis in China, and the business is now taking in $350,000 in annual profit, and this number is growing rapidly.

5. Describe a situation when your values and/or beliefs were challenged. What did you do, and why? (300 word limit)

In the second half of 2004, our chemical development department had a corporate goal of making 150 new chemical identities to support our drug discovery programs at Glaxo Wellcome, Inc. At the end of September, we had only finished 60 such compounds, and we were in despair because we were running out of time. We worked 12 hours a day and very often on weekends.

Under these circumstances, I made a compound that would be counted as one more toward our goal of 150. But just before I filled out all the paperwork, I ran one more test on the product. I discovered that the compound's purity was slightly below our required standards. In chemistry, purifying a compound is always challenging and time-consuming, and we did not have time to concentrate on this one project for too long. If we abandoned it, my work would be wasted, and we had no time to make up the work on our demanding time schedule. I was very tempted to just submit the project and count it toward our goal, because it was just one out of 150 and the chance of anyone detecting this error was very small. Under the circumstances, I very much just wanted to submit it and move on. I had a commitment as a team member to deliver as many as possible, but I also had to be responsible to the users. When people use our products, they assume them to have high purity, and they rely on that to draw conclusions and to make important strategic decisions. Moreover, one bad incident can destroy a reputation immediately and make it impossible to restore the user's confidence again. In the end, I decided not to count the product until I had further purified the compound. After much time working after hours, I cleaned up the compound and submitted it towards our goal.

6. Describe your three most substantial accomplishments and explain why you view them as such. (600 word limit)

My first accomplishment is that I helped my family start a business, and I helped to turn it into a fast growing company. In the beginning, the company faced many risks, including an unpredictable business environment, the lack of initial investment, and the uncertain nature of the pharmaceutical product. As a college senior, I analyzed the situation logically and saw great potential. Forming clear and concrete plans on how to move forward with limited resources, I convinced my family to become a business entity and helped make it successful.

My second accomplishment is the significant scientific progress I made at the University of Toledo. I joined Dr. Julian A. Davies's biomedical program to develop a new drug for preventing cancer. My diligent research work resulted in the discovery of a series of promising drug candidates. This result moved our whole project forward and attracted the pharmaceutical industry's sponsorship from Sheering AG of Germany. I valued this success very highly because several researchers before me attempted the same goal unsuccessfully. My creativity, intelligence, and handwork eventually led to the achievement of "the impossible" and pushed our once lagging project ahead. Besides the endorsement and recognition from the pharmaceutical industry, what is more gratifying is the fact that my research may lead to a drug to prevent cancer. This represented one more step toward my ultimate goal of bettering human lives.

My third accomplishment is that I was recognized as a core member for our group's "Outstanding Achievement Award" in 2004 at my current employer, a biomedical research institute owned by Glaxo Wellcome, Inc. I was the youngest member in the team, and I only started in the second half of 2004. At the end of the year, I not only contributed a full 20% to the stated goals and objectives of the group, I also helped other members in our group improve their productivity and move their projects forward. I also helped organize joint efforts with other departments to achieve their annual goals. This achievement gave me a good running start at Affymax Research Institute. As I take on more responsibilities and challenging projects, I established an excellent professional image among my colleagues. As a result, I was elected to participate in several global strategic operations within the Glaxo Wellcome organization in 2005, and once again our results became the pioneering work within our field and contributed significantly to the competitiveness of Glaxo Wellcome. My efforts also helped our group grow. We became the only group at Affymax Research Institute that expanded significantly in the past two years.

7. What are your career aspirations and why? How will you get there? (300 word limit)

My family is running a successful pharmaceutical company to market the drug my father invented for nephritis in my hometown, Tianjin, China. My first career goal is to expand the market substantially in China and to open up new markets in certain Southeast Asian countries. Then I will invest heavily in research and development programs for new pharmaceutical products. By utilizing my acquired expertise in management and marketing, I will help my family business grow to be a powerhouse in the Asian pharmaceutical industry.

My second career goal is to introduce the drug to the United States and make it available to kidney disease patients, especially to the 181,000 end-stage renal disease sufferers. To do this, I plan to start my own pharmaceutical company. The first project of the company will be to refine this specific product to American standards and manufacture and market it in the United States. Using the success of this product as a locomotive, I will recruit the most talented scientists into my team and acquire more cutting-edge technologies in pharmaceutical science to deliver new products to the market and to expand the company quickly. My long-term goal is to push ahead aggressively with new products in a 16r global market and compete with other pharmaceutical giants. Ultimately, I will spearhead groundbreaking science and transfer technological innovations into effective pharmaceutical products to address a variety of human health issues.

My mother, who suffered nephritis ten years ago and barely survived, inspired me to go into this industry. I experienced the fear and pain of almost losing a loved one, and I realize that the pharmaceutical industry gives me the opportunity to cure nephritis and other life-threatening diseases. Just as my father watched my mother nearly die and then discovered a cure for her disease, so do I want to develop new drugs and bring the benefits of the nephritis drug to the entire world. By combining my professional expertise with first class management skills, I will be better prepared to achieve this ambitious goal.

8. (Optional) Is there any other information that you believe would be helpful to the Board in understanding you better and in considering your application? Please be concise.

My decision to pursue an MBA education at Harvard University now is based on urgent family business needs. My father and brother have been running our private pharmaceutical company very successfully. The drug my father invented has become the most popular and most effective drug against kidney disease in China. The success of my family so far is 16ly due to their significant technical advantage, specifically the lack of an alternative effective drug for nephritis. However, as the potential market for this specific product broadens, entry of other products is certain. Without a well-trained management talent on board, gaining a 16r market share and sustaining growth would be very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Given my future plans, an MBA education becomes even more important. My ultimate goal is to become a business leader who can think, operate and compete globally. The best place to refine a global vision and to acquire the necessary skills to implement such a vision is at a top-notch business school. Now is the best time for me to pursue such an education. I have meaningful and substantial real world experiences and can thus benefit most from an MBA program. As an extremely motivated individual, I know what I need to learn and what qualities I need to strengthen. My goal is that by the time I graduate Harvard Business School, I will be ready to create a detailed and concrete plan for increasing the market share of the nephritis drug, and from there, I will reach my goals one by one.