True love for gloves
Juliana Lam is pushing her family’s mitten-making business to the next level with the help of her Ivey Asia EMBA.
After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in economics in 1996, Juliana Lam returned to Hong Kong and joined her family’s glove manufacturing business, the AML Group. After working there for over 10 years she decided to pursue an Executive MBA (EMBA) at the Richard Ivey School of Business Asia to broaden her business knowledge.
Now director of the company, she has discovered that, since graduating in 2009, her EMBA has been a huge help in running her business.
She was selected as an “Entrepreneur of Tomorrow 2010” by Capital Entrepreneur magazine and was included in the China Top 100 Women Entrepreneur Awards 2012 by the China Association of Women Entrepreneurs. She is also a founder ambassador of Green Monday, a non-governmental organisation which promotes green and healthy lifestyles.
What prompted you to pursue an EMBA?
I always thought that pursuing an MBA was one way of moving up to a higher level in my career in the long run. Bringing my company up to the next level was linked to this. Although I have always contributed lots of my time to my work, I believe that there is always room for improvement.
During 2006 and 2007, I suffered a major setback in my life. I couldn’t help but feel depressed during this period. However, as I was born happy and positive person, I began to question whether I could turn that negative energy into positive proactive tools. The path of pursuing an MBA happened to come at the right time.
After researching MBA and EMBA courses from different schools, I found that the content of an EMBA was a more suitable choice for me because of its emphasis on executives. As an executive, poring over textbooks is not my interest, but having a platform to discuss cases and listen to points of view from other executives from different industries is much more useful.
Why did you choose Ivey?
The main attraction is the reputation of the school. The Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario is the best business school in Canada and is known for focusing on case studies in their EMBA. I talked to a few Ivey alumni and they all spoke highly of the course. They were generally impressed by the quality of the teachers and the well-organised course content.