(Panelist skyping in to a panel from DC)

Throughout the week, we heard from Hoover Institute fellows, Stanford professors, the Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post, an official from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a former director of the World Bank, and a former Secretary of State under President Reagan, just to name a few. My greatest take-away from all of this is the surprising amount of humanity that is involved in international relations and foreign affairs. In Government classes, we learn about the realpolitk nationalism that plague the relations between China and the US. Our professors tell us that the Sino-US relation is shadowed by distrust stemming from sovereignty, human rights, security, and trade issues. FACES literally put a face to this entire discussion. Former Secretary of State George Schultz chuckled as he recounted how much fun he found former PRC President Jiang Zemin to be, and how much he appreciated Deng Xiaoping’s blunt, and straight-forward personality. Sure, Schultz spoke at lengths about the future of US and China in a bipolar system of world power, but what was most memorable to me was the thought, heart, and toil that these statesmen put into fostering the relationships of two countries.

Punctuating the provocative discussions of tri-party policy development in regards to Taiwan, panels about regional stability in South Asia, and seminar talks about gender roles in China and the U.S., the delegates…

Traipsed the Stanford campus making funky short films and learned the meaning of “chillin”.

Roamed around San Fran like perfect tourists.

Concocted elaborated three-course meals with a limited number of ingredients for the execs to “enjoy”.

Engaged in crisis simulations playing national leaders.

Shopped for Stanford gear

(Stanford’s mascot is a tree)

And learned how to share a small bed with a bedmate in the guest house at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

In between panels and parties, we found ourselves becoming fast friends. The delegates are Fullbright scholars, JD/MBA candidates, PHD students, entrepreneurs, government interns, non-profit founders, aspiring i-bankers/artists/diplomats/consultants/professors, multi-lingual exchange students, and much, much more. They hail from all corners of the world. Some switch between English and Chinese with a confident ease  that I admire. Some have been to more places than I will probably go my whole life. And how can we forget the executives at Stanford who organized this? Kudos guys!

Part II of the conference will convene in Hangzhou in November this year. See you in a flash!

Life has been hectic to say the least. Here’s a brief recap.

Work/Stay/Play in Syracuse. This is three-day “conference” that brought together 36 students from Cornell, URochester, and Syracuse U to solve, in a creative and collaborative manner, a huge issue the region faces: how to retain students in Upstate New York after graduation. Cornell paid for the transportation, food, and hotel for all her representatives so I was immensely grateful. Here’s the Daily Sun article!

Kingston getaway with my suite & Royal Military College Christmas Ball. My entire suite drove up to Kingston this past weekend to visit friends. Coincidentally, the Christmas Ball, supposedly one of the top parties in Canada, took place on the same weekend so my good friend Wendy came in from Toronto for the “festivities”, in the tame sense of the word. If I were to tag this tidbit, it would read: wall-scaling, Queen’s, poutine, pancakes, military boys men, endless dancing, black squirrels, Felix Felicis, and generosity and genuineness of so many people we met.

Student Assembly Finance Commission (SAFC) interview. Imagine my surprise when I walk into a boardroom in the basement of Day Hall to find 15-20 people inside – all ready to interview me, together, for an extra-curricular activity. With my love of interviews and public speaking, suffice to say, I decided to bath in the (doubtful) limelight of the occasion and ramble on about my previous experience doing financial services for the Commerce Undergraduate Society (THANK YOU TRAVIS). I’m happy to report that I’m a newly minted Commissioner on SAFC! Very excited to start allocating that $1.2 million (alright, less mathematically challenging than the CUS’s excel budgets but it’ll be fun).

Pants Off! for Charity event at the University of British Columbia. The organizers of this – one of whom is my good friend Lucas – will probably kill me for posting this so late, but here it is! The event was a tremendous success and raised over $400 in the span of a few hours. Here’s photographic evidence of the event

Lucas is the one on the left (you didn’t think I was going to let you off the hook by being “one of the three pantless boys” now did you?).

CORNELL, let’s see some creativity.

P.S. – My mom, an avid reader of this blog and self-proclaimed my biggest fan, will be so proud that it only took four entries before photos of half-dressed boys appeared on Ivy Years.

By the time we got to our hotel it was already nightfall. We drove to Cambridge and was shown around Harvard Square and Harvard Yard by our unofficial host. Sorry Ithaca, but Cambridge is what a legit college town should look like – festive shops, classy restaurants, preppy boys dressed in swoon-worthy black topcoats and Burberry scarves traveling in groups, actual civilization etc. Ithaca just has hippies. Everything’s definitely a lot closer on what we saw of the Harvard campus, which has its advantages. I do love Cornell’s gorgeous hilly landscape though.

(85Broads girls walking in Harvard at night)

The actual conference on Saturday morning took place at the Westin Copley Place in downtown Boston. 800 women from over 100 schools, with all Ivies represented. To my male colleagues, no, it was not an ultra-feminist, men bashing convention like you imagined. Professionalism, balance, curiosity, success marked the underlying themes.  The delegate bag was filled with goodies from Dior, American Eagle, Citigroup, P&G, Raymond James, Bain & Co., and the works. The opening keynote was in a surprising format – casual interview style Q&A with Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group. This was interesting because the closing keynote was from one of ABC’s biggest competitors – Alison Gollust, Executive VP Corporate Communications from NBC Universal.

(Alison Gollust, NBC, wearing this season’s on-trend gorgeous knee-high boots I might add)

My morning was a series of hilarious chance encounters. I saw people from Vancouver who flew in just for the conference. At one workshop, I unknowingly sat down at the same table as Jenny Hu, whose fame resonates in Sauder far and wide It took a few seconds for us to put the pieces together, having never met despite going to the same school for a year and hearing each other’s names every so often. I also finally met Yingna Liu face-to-face, who was a Harvard volunteer. I’ve “known” Yingna for two years through blogging, awesome eh?

The breakout sessions I attended were

• Finance 101: Investment Banking, Investment Management, and Sales & Trading – panelists from Barclays, Credit Suisse, Raymond James, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs
• Conquering the Case Study Interview – panelists from Oliver Wyman, Bain & Co., Parthenon, Monitor, Boston Consulting Group
• Beyond Banking: Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Hedge Funds - panelists from Colcomgroup, Blackstone, Harvard Business School
• Career Fair

Finance 101 was highly informative (one of the panelists was a Cornellian) and touched upon family life in relations to women in finance. The Case Study one was my favorite, and not only because Jenny Hu busted out her elite Strategic Consulting Mentorship Program skills. At this session, we broke into small groups and tackled an actual BCG case, led by associate Hana Adaniya.  Hana gave us tons of practical tips that I will definitely apply to my project with the Cornell Consulting Group.

A few very rough takeaways for consulting case study interviews

1. Paraphrase the question, extract the key point, do not repeat the whole thing word for word
2. Don’t rush through your explanations
3. STRUCTURE AND SEGMENTATION ARE GOOD, always have some kind of framework and walk the interviewer through it
4. Always provide alternatives when laying out solutions
5. But do make a final decision
6. BCG for one will usually have numbers and calculations. If you don’t have numbers you might be barking up the wrong tree (or wrong branch of the structured tree diagram)
7. Always close your response with insight -> what’s the bottom line impact? What are some next steps?

Most inspiring keynote goes to Johanna Hanneke Faber, VP for Pantene, Proctor & Gamble. She had an amazing career story and an absolutely wonderful personality that projected, simply, a love of life and different cultures. I will probably apply to P&G because of her (actually getting an internship there will be a different story entirely). Side note: I really appreciate the IBC people giving us the contact list for ALL the business delegates at the end of the day.

(Ladies from Cornell 85Broads at the convention. Wow, we’re photogenic.)

Even though I was exhausted by the end of the day – 800 women strutting around in heels for an entire day, the thought in itself is terrifying – I did manage, in typical female practicality, to squeeze in a little shopping time after the career fair. While the Louis Vuitton’s and Armani’s of Copley Place Mall was out of my price range, I did snag some Harvard/Boston souvenirs for friends and family.

The only issue I had was with the sneak-peak movie trailer shown by Alison Gollust in her closing keynote. The movie is called It’s Complicated and starrs Merryl Streep as an ambitious career woman, mother of three, and divorcee who falls for her now-remarried ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and becomes “the other woman” in a complicated love triangle. After an entire day of valuable career advice, female empowerment, promotion of the entrepreneurial spirit, and heated discussions of work-life balance, showing a trailer which insinuates that a successful woman who has it all still can’t be happy without a man might not have been the most ideal take-away message. It was entertaining though (ha).

Finally, quotes to end an overall amazing convention.

FIND MENTORS. FIND MENTORS. FIND MENTORS. – This was emphasized by at least 5 speakers

In your first six months in investment banking, do NOT expect work-life balance. – Finance panelists

It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. – Alison Gollust I think, NBC