Bridging the gap: new uses for management skills

从EMBA学员到博物馆馆长

Bridging the gap: new uses for management skills

作者：英国《金融时报》 安德鲁•埃奇克利夫-约翰逊 报道

“Education has always been a great bridge builder. We forget – we think it’s a recent thing,” says Alice Mong, director of the Museum of Chinese in America, as she shows a visitor around an exhibition charting the century-long history of the Yale-China Association.	“教育一直是消弭鸿沟极好的方式。我们忘记了这一点，我们认为这是最近的事，”美国华 人博物馆(Museum of Chinese in America,MOCA)馆长孟淑娟(Alice Mong)说道。她正带着一个访客参观一个展览，展览内容是雅礼协会(Yale-China Association)长达百年的历史。
The black-and-white images of Yale’s missionary brand of educational exchanges fill one room of a slick new building, dedicated to the history of the Chinese-American diaspora, from early traders and 19th-century railway builders to Steven Chu, US energy secretary, and Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo.	雅礼传教式教育交流的黑白影像，装满了一栋华美新建筑的整整一个房间。这些影像展现的是在美华人的历史——从早年的商人和19世纪的铁路建设者，到美国能源部长朱棣文(Steven Chu)和雅虎(Yahoo)联合创始人杨致远(Jerry Yang)。
Mong’s own journey to the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown took her through another pioneering cross-cultural programme. In 1998, she joined the inaugural class of the Kellogg-Hong Kong University of Science and Technology executive MBA programme, set up by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the HKUST’s Business School.	孟淑娟自己抵达曼哈顿唐人街心脏地带的人生历程，经过了另一个开拓性的跨文化项目。 1998年，她成为了凯洛格-香港科技大学EMBA课程的第一批学员。该课程由美国西北大学凯洛格管理学院(Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management)与香港科大商学院(HKUST’s Business School)联合推出。
Born in Taiwan 47 years ago, Mong moved to the US aged 10 and grew up an hour from Columbus, Ohio, in a town of 55,000 people. There were just three Chinese families and one Szechuan restaurant – run by her father.	孟淑娟47年前出生于台湾，10岁移民美国，在俄亥俄州一个距离哥伦布市一小时车程、人口5.5万的小镇长大。小镇上仅有三个中国家庭，以及一家四川饭店——店老板是她父亲。
After graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in international relations, Mong found herself working for the state of Ohio’s department of development, helping local companies do business internationally. With no business background, she wanted an American MBA, and had her eyes set on Kellogg in nearby Evanston, Illinois.	从俄亥俄州立大学(Ohio State University)取得国际关系学位后，孟淑娟在俄亥俄州政府的发展部找到了一份工作——帮助当地公司走出国门。因为欠缺商业背景，她想攻读一个美国 的MBA课程，她将目光锁定在离家不远的伊利诺斯州埃文斯顿的凯洛格管理学院。
“Either I was not good enough or I didn’t have the right experience, but I didn’t get in,” she recalls, “so I asked my boss to send me to Hong Kong” to promote Ohio companies’ trade with south-east Asia.	“或许是我不够好，也或许是我没有合适的经历，我当时没被录取，”她回忆说。“所以，我要我的老板把我送去香港，”去推动俄亥俄公司与东南亚的贸易。
Fluent in Mandarin, she soon moved to Hang Lung Properties, a Hong Kong group, where she spent five years working for Ronnie Chan, its chairman, and organising the 1997 handover festivities for guests of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s chief executive designate at the time.	普通话流利的她，很快跳槽去了香港集团恒隆地产(Hang Lung Properties)。此后，她为恒隆地产董事长陈启宗(Ronnie Chan)效力了5年；1997年移交庆典时，她为当时指定的香港行政长官人选——董建华(Tung Chee-hwa)安排了宾客庆祝活动。
Her desire to complete a US business degree remained, even in this corporate setting, Mong says, but adds: “I could not see myself giving up the network I had built.” When she went to hear a talk by Donald Jacobs, then Kellogg’s dean, about the school’s plan for a joint degree with HKUST, she realised that she need not sacrifice either ambition.	孟淑娟说，即使是在这种企业背景下，她仍有攻读美国商学学位的心愿；但她接着说：“我 无法看着自己放弃已经建立的人际网络。”当她听了当时的凯洛格院长唐纳德•亚葛布(Donald Jacobs)有关该学院计划与香港科大推出联合学位的讲话后，她意识到，她无需放弃两个雄心中的任何一个。
Sponsored by Chan’s family foundation, on the condition that she stay with the company for at least two years, Mong became one of 35 guinea pigs in a programme that topped the FT’s EMBA rankings after only a decade.	她得到了陈启宗家族基金的资助，条件是她答应在恒隆至少再留两年。于是，孟淑娟成为了凯洛格-香港科大EMBA课程35名试验学员之一。而仅过了十年，该课程就登上了英国《金融时报》EMBA排行榜的头号宝座。
The Kellogg-HKUST tie-up, the first of its kind in Asia, is no longer unique. Tsinghua and Insead now run joint EMBA programmes, as do Fudan and Washington University. Last year, the University of Hong Kong, a rival to HKUST, teamed up with Columbia Business School and London Business School to launch EMBA-Global Asia.	这种合作形式当时在亚洲尚属首次，但如今已较为普遍。清华与欧洲工商管理学院 (Insead)有一个联合培养EMBA的项目，复旦与华盛顿大学(Washington University)也有。去年，香港科大竞争对手——香港大学(the University of Hong Kong)联手哥伦比亚商学院(Columbia Business School)和伦敦商学院(London Business School)，推出了EMBA-Global Asia课程。
In 1998, however, Kellogg-HKUST was able to offer Mong something she would not have found in Evanstown. “What I found striking was the ‘Asian-ness’,” she says. With many of her classmates from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, “it was pretty equal. I would not have had that had I gone to Kellogg.”	不过，在1998年，凯洛格-香港科大EMBA课程，能够向孟淑娟提供一些她在埃文斯顿学不到的东西。“我觉得最突出的是‘亚洲性’，”她说。她的许多同学都来自中国大陆、台湾与香港——“我们非常平等。如果我去的是凯洛格，我就不会得到这样的氛围。”
Mong had been picked as senior investment manager for Hantak, a non-property investment subsidiary that Hang Lung set up in the middle of the dotcom investment boom, and the entrepreneurial mood of the time lit up the classroom. “In 1998 and 1999, a lot of exciting things were happening in the international business world, so we got to practise at work some of the stuff we were learning. It was really timely,” she says.	当时恒隆已挑选孟淑娟出任Hantak高级投资经理，这是该集团在网络投资繁荣时期成 立的非房地产投资子公司；当时的创业情绪照亮了整个课堂。孟淑娟说：“1998和1999年，国际商界发生了许多令人兴奋的事情，这使得我们能够将一些学 到的东西运用到工作中。非常合时宜。”
Classmates as diverse as one working on Hong Kong’s new airport, a Morgan Stanley managing director and an executive for a cake-shop chain also brought their own dilemmas to the classroom, Mong adds. “We would sometimes learn as much from our classmates as from the faculty,” she says. “It meant we got our hands on real situations.”	她接着说，她的同学们也将自己的难题带到课堂上。她的同学背景非常多样，有一个为香港 新机场工作、有一个是摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的董事总经理，还有一个是蛋糕连锁店主管。“有时，我们从同学那里学到的东西，与从老师那里学到的一样多。这意味着我们能够学着处理实际 情形。”
The 18-month EMBA programme now covers 11 modules, from organisational design to building consumer brands in China, packed into two weekends a month. Students live on the HKUST campus from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening. Half the teaching is by Kellogg faculty members, but all the modules are taught in Hong Kong, except two live-in weeks in Illinois.	这个为期18个月的EMBA课程如今包括11个单元，从组织设计，到在中国构建消费品牌，上课时间挤在每个月的两个周末。从周五下午到周日晚上，学员们住在香港科大校园内。一半课程由凯洛格教员讲授，但除了要在伊里诺斯度过两周外，所有单元都在香港完成教学。
Mong remembers her months at the campus overlooking Hong Kong’s Clear Water Bay as being “pretty intense”, working 13- to 14-hour days. “You had one weekend to recover, but you still had to do the homework,” she says. Small groups of five or six students would set up evening conference calls to get their assignments done.	孟淑娟记得自己在俯瞰香港清水湾的科大校园中度过的日子，“非常紧张”，每天要工作13到14个小时。“你有一个周末来恢复，但你仍得完成家庭作业，”她说。每5到6个人会组成一个小组，晚上召开电话会议，以完成作业。
“All of us really learned time management,” she says. When she finished, she says, she was “better at working, more empathetic with how other people think, and more familiar with different sectors. [Hang Lung] wasn’t just investing in property any more. It allowed me to broaden out, to help build that new division.”	她说：“我们所有人都真正学会了时间管理。”她表示，当她完成课程时，她“更会工作了、更能对其他人的想法产生共鸣了、对不同行业也更熟悉了。（恒隆）不再只投资于房地产业了。这使得我得以伸展拳脚，帮助发展那个新部门。”
Other Hang Lung executives completed the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA after Mong, who recommended it to friends for several years after she graduated. But by 2002, the dotcom fever had subsided and Hang Lung disbanded its non-property arm.	在孟淑娟之后，恒隆其他高管也陆续参加了凯洛格-香港科大的EMBA课程。毕业后数年期间，她一直向友人推荐这一课程。但是，到了2002年，网络热减退了，恒隆也解散了旗下非房地产投资部门。
Mong thought her next job would be in China, but she was approached about the executive directorship of the Committee of 100, a group of prominent Americans of Chinese descent focused on improving US-China relations.	孟淑娟以为她的下一份工作会在中国，但百人会(Committee of 100)接洽了她，请她出任执行董事。百人会是杰出美籍华人组织，致力于改善美中关系。
She had not planned to work in the non-profit world, but a period of “soul-searching” changed her mind. Her parents were ageing and the country where she had spent half her life was still reeling from the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. “I think 9/11, as a Chinese-American, made me think, ‘Where is home?’” she says. “The business sector didn’t seem as glamorous to me any more.”	她之前并未打算涉足非盈利性行业，但一段时间的“内省”改变了她的想法。她的父母正步 入晚年，而她度过了半生的国家仍因2001年9/11恐怖袭击而感到茫然。她说：“我想，作为一位美籍华人，9/11让我开始思考，‘哪里是家？’商界对 我似乎不再像以前那么具有吸引力了。”
Concerned at what she saw as widespread misunderstanding of China in the US, Mong regarded the committee – whose members included I.M. Pei, the architect, and Tan Dun, the composer – as another bridge builder. Years after she had first itched for a corporate position, she also found herself unfulfilled by corporate life.	在孟淑娟看来，美国各界普遍存在对中国的误解，对此感到担忧的她认为，百人会是另一个消弭鸿沟的方式。百人会的会员包括建筑设计师贝聿铭(I.M. Pei)与作曲家谭盾。孟淑娟起初渴望进入企业；但这些年后她发现，企业生活并未让她感到充实。
“Maybe I was not cracked up to be in the business world,” she says, but with her Kellogg-HKUST training, she set about running the non-profit organisation like a small business, opening its Hong Kong office, managing conferences in Hong Kong and Beijing, and raising more than $3.5m in five years.	她说：“或许我并不真正适合商界。”但凭借她的凯洛格-香港科大培训，她开始像经营小企业那样经营百人会——设立香港办公室，管理在香港与北京举行的会议，并在5年内融资350万美元以上。
One of the committee’s goals, of championing the achievements of Chinese in the US, intersected closely with that of the Museum of Chinese in America that Mong now runs. By the time she was recruited in 2009 to succeed the museum’s director (also its co-founder), she had been a member and helped with its fundraising for several years.	百人会的其中一个目标——推介美国华裔的成就，与孟淑娟现在管理的美国华人博物馆的目标非常契合。在2009年应聘接任美国华人博物馆馆长（也是它的联合创始人）的职位之前，她一直是该博物馆的会员，多年来一直在帮该馆筹集资金。
The museum – originally called the Chinatown History Project, offering modest local exhibits on an upper floor of a former school – was already entertaining bigger ambitions. Mong started work two months before the museum was due to move into new premises. At the time, it was $13m into a fundraising programme that aims to raise $15m by next year.	该博物馆最初叫做“纽约中国城历史项目(Chinatown History Project)”，在一所学校旧址的二楼展出少量当地展品。如今，该博物馆已有了更大的志向。孟淑娟于博物馆搬至新址的两个月前上任。该馆有一个到明年 融资1500万美元的项目，在孟上任时，已经融得1300万美元。
This year, 35,000 people will visit the museum, up from 20,000 at its old location. Among them have been high-profile guests such as Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York. But Mong’s task is to expand the museum’s profile and budget, and one day move it from its rented premises to create a larger, permanent national museum about Americans of Chinese extraction.	今年将有3.5万人参观该博物馆，高于老馆的2万人。其中不乏知名人士，如纽约市长迈 克尔•布隆伯格(Michael Bloomberg)。但孟淑娟的任务是，扩大它的知名度与预算，有朝一日将它从租用的场地，迁到一个更大的永久性的国家博物馆，以展现美国华裔历史为主 题。
Here, she says, the Kellogg-HKUST training has been invaluable. “I just finished my five-year strategic plan in June,” she says. “All of the stuff I learned in my EMBA came into play. I dug out my papers from my class.”	孟淑娟说，在这点上，凯洛格-香港科大培训的价值无法估量。她说：“我在6月份刚完成我的5年战略规划。我在EMBA课程中学到的所有东西都派上了用场。我翻出了自己在课堂上记的笔记。”
With an operating budget of $2.5m, a staff of 10 and a host of volunteers and interns, “fundamentally, it’s still a business”, she says.	她说，250万美元的经营预算、10名员工、一批志愿者与实习生，“从根本上说，它仍然是一个企业。”
In this environment, Mong has found her network of EMBA classmates invaluable. One of them, Michael Ducker, president of FedEx’s global business, is a supporter of the Committee of 100 and of the museum.	在这个环境中，孟淑娟发现，她的EMBA老同学网络非常有价值。其中的一位——联邦快递(FedEx)国际业务总裁邓博华(Michael Ducker)，既赞助了百人会，也赞助了美国华人博物馆。
“That network is still quite strong,” Mong says. It is sustained by monthly gatherings for those still in Hong Kong, alumni magazine updates and frequent visits from those scattered as far as Europe and Australia.	孟淑娟说：“这个网络现在仍然很牢固。”它之所以能维系，是因为那些在香港的人每月都会聚会、校友杂志会不断更新、那些分散在世界各地（远至欧洲与澳洲）的人会时常拜访。
The museum does not shy from harsher times in Chinese-American history, such as the violence around the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. A poster from that time reads: “Shall we have Chinese? No! No! No!” Mong remarks: “A lot of the anti-immigration rhetoric we’re hearing now you saw back then.”	美国华人博物馆并不回避美国华裔历史上较为不愉快的时期，比如围绕《1882年排华法 案》(Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882)发生的暴力事件。当时的一张布告上面写着：“我们应该接纳华人吗？不！不！不！”孟淑娟说：“我们现在听到的许多反移民言论，在当时都能找 到。”
But amid the replica opium balls, restaurant menus, laundry signs and Charlie Chan film posters, a strong educational theme emerges, in profiles of Tsien Hsue-shen, the US-educated “father of Chinese rocketry”, and Zheng Ji, the Nanjing University professor who earned his biochemistry degree at Ohio State University and lived to almost 111. Mong and her Kellogg-HKUST peers are following in their footsteps.	但在鸦片球复制品、饭店菜单、洗衣店标志与陈查理(Charlie Chan)电影海报中间，一些名人的传略突显出了一个强烈的教育主题。“中国火箭之父”钱学森曾在美国接受教育；南京大学教授郑集在俄亥俄州立大学取得了 生物化学学位，还活到了将近111岁。孟淑娟与她的凯洛格-香港科大EMBA课程的同学正在追随他们的脚步。
	译者/何黎