Archive for the ‘Stories of Alumni’ Category

Hans Maerki

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

 
Today Mr. Maerki is the Chairman of the board of IBM in Europe, Middle East and Africa, thereby heading a USD $28 billion business with more than 106, 000 employees in 124 countries around the globe.

His long road to success includes three years spent with AIESEC, first in Switzerland and then one year with AIESEC International. While Mr. Maerki was Exchange Coordinator on AI, AIESEC reached its highest Exchange numbers recorded thus far.
After he had finished his studies, Mr Maerki supported AIESEC through chairing several international conferences. Mr. Maerki attraction to international organisations took root while he spent one year on an exchange in the United States. He regards this year as his most outstanding experience which has shaped his life and subsequent choices.

Mr. Maerki recounts traveling from office to office of CEO’s in the US, looking for funds to keep this youth organization going. It also gave him the self-confidence to sit opposite high ranking executives, and feel on par while discussing partnerships between AIESEC and large multi-nationals. “AIESEC gives young people practical experience in organisational management and inter-cultural communication,” Mr. Maerki explains. “In today’s business world, a lot of management takes place virtually, and as AIESEC is mainly run using web-based communication, AIESECers also walk away with this vital skill.”

After his University and AIESEC terms, Mr. Maerki joined IBM. Some of his significant achievements with IBM include doubling the revenue ($12 Billion), between 1996 and 2002, as well as raising the number of employed colleagues from 32,000 to 68,000, thereby making IBM Global Services the largest employer of Management and IT consultants, not only in Europe, but worldwide. In addition to this, Mr. Maerki is a member of the Corporate Social Responsibility Advisory Board, which represents around 50 large European Corporations.

Through his intercultural experiences and with those within the international environment of IBM, Mr. Maerki felt that IBM’s extensive employee selection criterion was lacking two crucial aspects. In addition to a drive to achieve, a personal dedication to excellence and other stringent characteristics, Mr. Maerki added inter-cultural experience. He feels that language skills, international work-experience and respect for cultural divergence are all essential in today’s borderless world. And this is where an organization like AIESEC plays an important role.

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Joan Wilson

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Joan Wilson is an important woman in AIESEC’s history, as she became the first woman from a non European member country to be AIESEC International’s Secretary General in 1980. Among the highlights of her term were trips to Eastern Europe and South Africa, two regions where the political situation was very different from what they are today. Joan helped to rebuild the National Committee of AIESEC in Poland after the team members died in a plane crash returning from the 1980 International Congress in Chicago. In 1981, AIESEC in South Africa’s membership was under review because of the government’s apartheid policy, Joan visited and met with students in the then-segregated universities. AIESEC was one of the few programs available for non-white students to travel abroad and for that reason she recommended to the global network that South Africa remain in AIESEC’s international member network.


Joan was President of the local committee at the University of Toronto in her graduating year, and went on to become President of AIESEC in Canada, where she helped to secure AIESEC’s first grant from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). AIESEC gave Joan the opportunity to enhance her communication skills especially when dealing with business people and gain an international perspective and ability to function in different culture situations.

After her involvement with AIESEC International and a traineeship in Switzerland, she returned to study and work in Canada. Today Joan is Vice President and Corporate Secretary of Sun Life Financial, a leading international financial services organization headquartered in Canada. She still supports AIESEC in Canada as an advisor and expects to attend AIESEC Canada’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, which falls in the same year as AIESEC International’s 60th Anniversary.

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