Last Sunday I had a fantastic day. IE Business School Alumnis participated for the second time in the annual Dragon Boat rowing race organized by the Swiss Association of MBA’s (SAMBA) in Zürich.
We were competing against 9 other Business Schools. The weather was perfect, the lake was warm, and we had a very cool Swiss coxswain and the best drummer ever! Pamela, the drummer, was not just looking very cool by sitting in front of the big drums with her stylish eyeglasses; she was also strict and loud enough to give us directions. (Later on I told her that I believe she will be a very good wife in case she gets married one day- always giving the right directions to her husband ha-ha- sorry guys). She is also responsible for the great videotape you will find here because she took care of the camera too. In case you feel sick when watching it just go to minute 1:36 it gets quieter than 😉
The race was around 300 meters and we competed in several rounds against each other. I have to admit that I totally underestimated the power we needed. I was quite relaxed at the beginning thinking that 10 people rowing will have enough power to be as fast as the roadrunner back in the 80ies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJW7EF5aVk ).
Unfortunately after our first training at 10 am in the morning we realized that we need to eat much more spinach and to train our muscles more than ever before to be as fast as the nice guys which we saw during the Olympia rowing competitions 2012 in London.
I was very proud to be part of the IE-Group, to be honest we had the coolest branded outfits (simple, elegant, practical) and the biggest diversity in our group concerning origins and sex, meaning our team consisted out of members from all over the world and 4 women (woman quota more than reached!)
On Sunday I realized once more that it was definitively worth doing an MBA or Master at the IE business School. I met very nice people; I enlarged my network and had a lot of fun.
Furthermore I prepared for my future. Why? One of our Alumni’s is working in a Pharma-company which takes care of beauty products like Botox and implants. For a girl in her 30ies this is a very important contact! Another one of my team-members has his own financial advisory company and in case one day I get married rich I will probably need him 😉
What we really appreciated was the participation of two non-IE-Alumni’s our team. One of our rowers unfortunately was sick and we were only 9 instead of 10 at the beginning so that we were really happy about the two ladies who joined our team to help us out.
For an executive summery I would write:
A perfect day, with sun, nice people, chocolate cake, great outfits, good networking and some learning’s as well. For example I was not aware that it is so difficult to translate IE-Business School in Chinese:
Finally the girls who were writing our names in Chinese made it but to be honest- I have no idea if it really means IE-Business School.
I can only advise all readers of this article to come and join us next year.
I will be there (not just because of the nice professional rowers who were training next to our race 😉
The whole event as well as our outfits were sponsored by IE!! Thank you so much!
And last but not least a huge thank you for Franka and Gregor who keep the Alumni network alive in Switzerland and are always there for us.
Greetings from Zürich
Michaela Götze
PS: The Omnium Team from St.Gallen had some difficulties to explain me why they had this name on their shirts… for all readers from St. Gallen- here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnium
Additional information:
• SAMBA the Swiss association of MBA looks at ways to build bridges between alumni from top business schools and organized the event. Join fellow alumni for example by become a member in our LinkedIn group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=99477&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
• Business Schools we competed with were: Kellogg, Stanford, and HSG Omnium (who could not explain me why the MBA was named Omnium ;), INSEAD, Strathclyde, Bocconi/RSM, Londin Business School, and MBA-HAS.
About the author
Kim is currently part of the European team in the International Development department at IE. Following her legal studies in London, she became the Director of various art galleries in both the UK and Spain, organizing international exhibitions in Asia, Europe and the US and editing various publications on Film and the Arts, and then went on to work as a legal assistant and translator at an International law firm based in Madrid.