Mobility & the MBA
AUTHOR: Jo Cooper DATE: 06.09.07 ISSUE 1, 2007
Moving her way up the ranks of an international financial services firm, Lily Kwok discovered firsthand why business education counts.
Lily Kwok joined financial services provider State Street Australia in 1991, intending to stay for three months to gain some experience.
Sixteen years later, she remains one of its most loyal employees, having graduated from “the lowest bottom ranking” to become a vice-president of international State Street Corporation. She’s also chief of global marketing for the Asia-Pacific region and heads the investor services business in Taiwan.
| “I’ve become more open-minded and sociable, and I’m outspoken – in a good way, of course!" says AGSM MBA (Executive) alumna Lily Kwok. |
Originally from Hong Kong, Ms Kwok moved to Brisbane where she honed her accounting skills through a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Queensland. After graduating, she returned to Hong Kong where she joined Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) and became a Certified Practising Accountant. Anticipating possible fallout from the handover of Hong Kong to China later that decade, Ms Kwok returned to Australia in 1991.
Australia was in the grip of “the recession we had to have”, and the Big Four accounting firms were reluctant to hire. “Others in the industry didn’t recognise my previous experience in Hong Kong. I was very lucky to join State Street, but it meant starting all over again,” she recalls.
Hired to join State Street’s investment servicing arm, the position entrenched her in the financial sector, so she opted to study part-time for a Graduate Management Qualification and then an MBA (Executive) at AGSM. This accelerated her move up the ladder “quite quickly”.
The MBA experience also boosted her social skills. “It helped me to understand that networking with people was very important,” Ms Kwok says. “I changed my attitude at work, so I could rub shoulders a bit with the more important people. I’m not so conservative or locked up or uptight. I’ve become more open-minded and sociable, and I’m outspoken – in a good way, of course!”
In 1998, an emboldened Ms Kwok moved back to Hong Kong, and has continued to move up the ranks. “The most exciting part for me is being able to help my company to win challenging and difficult business through the door,” she says.
Overseeing a team of staff in Hong Kong, China, Japan and Australia, she says managing people is her biggest challenge. “You need to understand people’s cultures and perceptions and the business dynamic, and to have a very positive attitude in order to work with different kinds of people.”
Her commitment to the company these days is stronger than ever. “I would like to be able to expand the market on the revenue generating side,” she says. “In terms of the cost side, I’m in charge of marketing for Asia-Pacific already. But to a company the more important area is revenue generation – so I would like to do more of that.”