Danish leadership brought Nattana to CBS – with a little help from the Waldemar Schmidt scholarship

Danish leadership brought Nattana to CBS – with a little help from the Waldemar Schmidt scholarship

Foto: Anne M. Lykkegaard.

This is a summary of a CBS Wire article, published on 9 October 2018. Click here to read article in full.

Nattana Utoomprurkporn, a current Copenhagen MBA student, is only 26 years old and knows that she is to take over her family’s Bangkok-based business, which imports hearing aids from Europe. But she is not quite ready yet.

“I didn’t want to take over the business right away. I felt like I needed more experience work-wise, but also in terms of education, and CBS seemed like a perfect fit,” she says to CBS Wire.

Nattana was the lucky recipient of the Waldemar Schmidt scholarship, founded by the former CEO himself to promote international experience and exposure to Danish leadership.

“It is so important to live abroad, especially at a young age, because you get a whole new perspective on your home country. And staying abroad is something you will never forget, so I thought this was a good way to help,” says Waldemar Schmidt, who has previously lived in Brazil for 10 years.

Last week, Waldemar and Nattana met for the first time in the CBS Executive building. After pleasant chatting over tea and coffee, Nattana walked away with some useful advice from her benefactor that is 50 years her senior and highly experienced in running a company:

“Transparency is everything. Don’t keep secrets. Have a clear vision of where you are going with the business and include everyone in that vision. And make sure you bring people together with different tasks and knowledge. It can be tough at first to introduce these kinds of values to a company, but I tell you, people like it, and when they like their job, they stay.”