NANYANG MBA

The Nanyang MBA Experience: A Tale of Two Brothers

It was a no-brainer for brothers Tan Sheng Jie and Tan Sheng Wei. The older of the two, Sheng Jie, found his career taken to new heights post-MBA.  After completing the Nanyang Waseda double MBA programme, Sheng Jie climbed the ranks to become the Senior Vice President, Head of Strategy and Experience (Asia Market) at Liberty Mutual Insurance.

Sheng Wei, for his part, won a Nanyang Innovation Leader Scholarship on the strength of his work at the Singapore Tourism Board (STB). He earned a place in the Nanyang MBA programme and is presently building on his past leadership experience.

We talked to both brothers to find out how they are achieving their respective goals – and how they’re helping each other along the way.

Where it all started

Before applying at Nanyang Business School as a trainee manager in Singapore Airlines’ SIA Executives Programme, Tan Sheng Jie was already thinking a few steps ahead.

“I was there for about three years; I was then placed in this overseas manager scheme to be a GM of a small office outside of Singapore,” Sheng Jie recalled. “I felt like I wanted to learn more because my experience was short – I wanted to self-improve.”

Thus, Sheng Jie made a fateful last-minute decision to join the Nanyang Waseda double MBA programme in 2015. “Nanyang MBA was a stage of my career that I’m very grateful for,” Sheng Jie told us.

An NTU career counsellor convinced Sheng Jie to reconsider his career path; upon finishing his double MBA in 2016, “I entered the Liberty Mutual Corporate Development Programme as the only international candidate for my cohort,” he said.

His younger brother, Tan Sheng Wei, joined STB as a management associate in 2017. Sheng Wei quickly rose to a managerial position within just a few years.

Much of Sheng Wei’s work revolved around liaising with external stakeholders. This made him consider the MBA programme, as a path towards gaining the tools and skills he needed to advance: “I will be able to lead a team better, manage a team, and all these things, the MBA will be able to help me continue with.”

Sheng Jie: learning from diversity

In the Nanyang Programme, not everyone comes from a business degree background, enabling Sheng Jie to see problems from different perspectives. “Everyone’s thinking about it from a slightly different starting point, and within a very short space of time, even within a seminar setting, you instantly elevate your vantage point and things to consider,” he explained.

He further shared how the programme taught him to synthesise problems in a very short time. “In my current career, I have to jump on many different problems,” he explained. “That’s a muscle I think I exercised in the MBA programme”.

As the Nanyang MBA programme takes place over a 12-month or 18-month period, participants are motivated to be agile learners who can bring in different opinions and adapt at an accelerated rate.

Sheng Wei: seeking leverage for future careers

As he begins the first few months of his MBA experience, Sheng Wei considers it “a personal achievement that I always wanted to hit.”  He entered the programme under the general management track; plans are in motion to switch to the sustainability and innovation track, which “will be very prominent and will be required regardless of the industry you go to.”

Sheng Wei explained that his time on the Singapore Tourism Board’s hotel team demonstrated a core innovative mindset that helped earn him the Nanyang Innovation Leader Scholarship. “I was able to catalyse the development of IT solutions, which solved pain points that the hotels could never solve previously,” he explains.

The Nanyang MBA, Sheng Wei says, should help him gain competitive leverage in the future, so he can take on whatever roles he sets his mind on. His older brother, Sheng Jei, provided an example to emulate: “I could see how his position has risen just through the MBA programme, how he can take on more responsibility, and more importantly, how he’s able to deliver even with this added responsibility,” Sheng Wei explained.

Brotherly words of wisdom

For his part, Sheng Jie shared his top three pieces of advice for his brother and those taking the MBA programme:

• Be humble. The programme requires hearing from colleagues with different backgrounds. Earning a Nanyang MBA requires that students remind themselves, “hey, I’m here to learn and listen,” Sheng Wei said.
• Be open-minded and curious. To learn as much as you can, you need to “immerse yourself into the conversations and the insights from different people,” Sheng Wei explained, “not just checking the boxes.”
• Have faith in yourself. MBA candidates may feel intimidated by their surroundings and routines. But they need to “trust yourself, your work ethic, the education and relevance that Nanyang MBA provides, and just put your best foot forward.”

Sheng Wei believes that conscientious MBA students should fully commit, immerse, and learn as much as possible: “It’s not just about getting the certificate at another date. It’s really about the learning.”

The road to success is always long and winding, but the Tan brothers have shown that it’s best when you travel it together, armed with the ability to innovate, lead, and transform.

The Nanyang MBA is a flexible 12-month or 18-month programme designed to fuel your growth into a future-ready leader equipped with the skills needed to excel in a global, digital environment. The programme aims to develop impactful, culturally adept leaders who embrace the connection between business, technology, and innovation to excel in global environments and adapt to each new wave of digital change.