Building bridges

Nueno talks with celebrity TV anchor Yang Lan, a former MBA student of his school. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Nueno says building a school from zero was not easy.

He and his Chinese partners first found a space with help from the local government. They then spent time searching for instructors and finally formed an academic board.

He also drew on his own resources, including reaching out to business institutions around the world and inviting friends who are professors to teach in China.

A few years later he and his Chinese partners planned a campus in Shanghai.

They then convinced the European Foundation for Management Development, which is an association of European business schools, to get involved in the project, and also raised funds from international companies based in Hong Kong for the campus.

"People trusted us because they saw we were a committed Chinese-European team, and I think this has always been the case," he says.

The Shanghai government also decided to support them with land in the Pudong area, which has now turned into a vast well-equipped campus.

However, before the campus opened in 1995, they had to use classrooms in Shanghai Jiaotong University and even hold lectures inside local hotels, says Nueno.

Now the school has grown significantly. It has three campuses－in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen－and two international bases, one in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and the other in Zurich.

The school has around 800 EMBA students and holds three full-time MBA classes every year, with about 40 percent of the nearly 200 MBA students from overseas.

"It (the school) is becoming more global. But we will continue to grow in China and also internationally," says Nueno, adding that many Chinese students from the early years have become top managers with Chinese companies.