Life-Changing Decisions: an Encounter with DDIM Alumni

What Kind of Experience to be a DDIMer? Two DDIM alumni gonna tell you all you care about!

No.1

Edoardo Grillo

（2014 DDIM）

Last night, we had the opportunity to meet our friend and colleague Edoardo Grillo, an Italian alumnus from LUISS University who has been enrolled in DDIM at Fudan School of Management in 2014. We had a wonderful dinner with him, in Shanghai city centre, and we enjoyed our time chatting and telling each other about our lives.

Edoardo is a smart and successful ex-student who finished his university career three years ago. After the one year-period spent in Shanghai, Edoardo’s working life has taken off. The DDIM program not only allowed him to discover the wonderful Chinese culture, so different from the European one, but also let him to approach to a completely new academic and working environment. Fudan University and Chinese friends and colleagues gave Edoardo all the “relational skills” to work in an international company. Actually, I was amazed when he told me about one of his first job interviews after having graduated. The recruiter had been happily surprised to know a student with an international background as Edoardo did. The strong reputation of Fudan along with his outstanding academic results had made the difference. Moreover, Edoardo focused to tell me how much is important to attend extra-curricular events that university organizes. It is possible for students to meet interesting people in order to lay the foundation for future working opportunities.

Thanks to his experience at Fudan, he started a finance internship at DiaSorin, one of the world’s leader companies in the pharmaceutical sector, taking place in its modern headquarter in Shanghai city centre. Moreover, in 2016, having concluded his university path with excellent results, he applied for a 6 months business analyst’s internship at McKinsey & Company that allowed him to live his dream to work for one of the Big Three consulting firms. This internship led him to learn how to deal with amazing business cases with some of the most important companies in the world and how to enter the fascinating universe of strategic consulting.

Today, Edoardo permanently works at McKinsey since almost three years and is going to attend a Master in Business Administration (MBA) at Columbia University in New York, which McKinsey offered to him, starting from January 2020. Such an experience will conduct Edoardo to his future successes, pushing him to be one of the most promising young analyst in the company.

His experience as a DDIMer should let us think that our future is in our hands and our international experiences, mixed with competences we acquire day by day, could allow us to be the rinsing star of our generation.

——Antonio Filannino, 2019 DDIM

No.2

Stefano Sardo

（2009 DDIM）

Stefano Sardo entered the classroom on the third floor of the Starr building exactly as he had done every day for an entire year, ten years ago. However, this time was different, he did not have to check in with the T.A. for the attendance, nor did he have to scramble to find a free seat among the other students. Driven by the emotions that spring from the familiarity of the well-known surroundings, Sardo placed himself at the center of the classroom and with a surge of energy and enthusiasm, began the lecture concerning investment dynamics. Among an excursus on the Private Equity process and the explanation of asset-pricing, the Bocconi and Fudan alumnus transmitted heart-felt advice to the current eighty DDIM students.

Sardo was one of the early pioneers of the Double Degree Master of Science in International Management, which foresees one year at Fudan University and the following second year in Italy either in Milan at Bocconi University or in Rome at LUISS. Looking back, he admitted his decision to enroll in the program was a true leap in the dark for, while most of his colleagues from his bachelor-degree chose to apply to Masters close to home, in Italy or within Europe, Sardo embarked on a radically different journey and travelled across the world towards an untrodden continent. This is precisely what the DDIM experience offers, the program pushes students outside of their comfort zone, far away from what they are used and accustomed to and drives them to plunge into the unknown. The program strives to broaden horizons, provide flexibility and give the opportunity to observe and acquire a two-world mindset and an ultimately global perspective. Without a moment of hesitation, Stefano Sardo recognized his decision to join the program as “probably the best [he has ever] made”.

The DDIM alumnus attributed to the two university years across China and Italy a fundamental role in his life, “if I had to single-handedly extract one moment which changed my future, it would be the DDIM”, confessed the alumnus. By living one year abroad, the program provides a full immersion in a completely different social, economic and cultural context and thus allows students to become multicultural individuals with the skills necessary to thrive in a global environment. The unique experience and mixed background provided by the program allows DDIM students to stand out in the current global business environment. This Double Degree Master allows students to pursue the most disparate career opportunities with a special and distinctive skill set that gives them the opportunity to differentiate themselves from their peers. Sardo repeatedly highlighted that it was indeed this competitive advantage that allowed him to jump start his career in the competitive world of finance, within the M&A division of a US investment bank in London.

The prestigious Double Degree was life-changing for Stefano Sardo not only from a business point of view, as it allowed him to embark on a very successful career in an investment bank at first and then within different hedge funds, but also from a personal point of view. Among the things he cherishes the most from the program is the incredible bond that ties the students of his class. Sardo explained that the friendship that still holds together him and many of his fellow DDIM classmates is in many ways stronger than any other friendship. The bond is extremely special because it is formed between people who share a completely atypical and extraordinary experience, who have to face uncommon situations and who have to overcome the many difficulties that come along with moving across the world. Sardo fondly remembers the shock of the first few days in Shanghai, the unfamiliar smells permeating the streets, the struggles deriving from the great language barrier (at that time this difficulty was amplified by the complete absence of smartphones and apps that help with payments, instant translations, maps and other essential services), the taxi rides (which today have become didi-rides) towards Shanghai city center, the classes held by Chinese and Italian professors, the eye-opening journeys across China, the chaotic streets filled with traffic, the taste of a midnight baozi, and all the other sensory and cognitive puzzle pieces that compose the incredible synesthesia of university life in China. All these (at times overwhelming) experiences that make up one year of life create and strengthen indelible ties among the students of the program, who live, study, grow, explore and travel together. Sardo smiles and discloses that his best man at his wedding was in fact one of his friends from DDIM.

The hedge fund investment analyst concluded his lecture and waved off the students of the 14th edition of the DDIM program with a kind of carpe diem, advising them to fully experience these two years with all of the challenges, surprises, difficulties and joys that they will encounter.  Stefano Sardo set off with his wife, he wanted to stroll once again along the streets he used to walk through daily and show her the places where he still proudly feels at home 10 000 kilometers away from Italy.

——Caterina Tridenti, 2019 DDIM