As Bridgestone is optimising European operations, there is a need for new ways of approaching issues and new levels of thinking. With this reality in mind, Bridgestone has established a partnership with AIESEC.

According to the management of Bridgestone, people in AIESEC are used to seeing the bigger picture - what the
organisation is striving for and what that has to do with work. Young people who have been active in AIESEC have
gained extremely important experiences; working with people from different cultures, managing teams, proactively taking responsibility. Yves Bataille, Senior Manager, IT says, “We are a truly international minded company with our different manufacturing and sales companies all around Europe. Our challenge is to help all these people to work together. Through AIESEC interns we help our company to develop the habit of working with different cultures. ”

Jörg Lüdemann, AIESEC intern is currently a part of the SAP support team of Bridgestone. He says “Beside working
in the multinational environment in the headquarters and the possibility of being retained afterwards, the
position that was offered by Bridgestone was exactly matching my own expectations towards the scope of the first job in my career. ”

As Patrick Woitrain, Director, HR Europe puts it “We believe young people who have been active in AIESEC have
gained extremely important experiences; working with people from different cultures, managing teams, proactively taking responsibility. These people often have the potential we are looking for… they can support us in facing the situations and environments we find ourselves as a company. ”

This being the first year of co-operation, both AIESEC and Bridgestone are looking forward to continue a successful partnership.

Electrolux is a globally present, customer oriented and innovative company with an extremely high retention rate. Their partnership with AIESEC provides them with an extremely valuable source of talents for their business processes.

Electrolux has been globally partnering with AIESEC since 2003. According to Monica Redolfi, Vice President Europe, Floor Care and Small Appliances, “AIESEC is an organization which understands our business needs and provides us with the right type of people. It also serves the purpose of building our employer branding in a truly international environment. In today’s business we compete to get the right competencies in the right place at the right time. AIESEC brings to us the competencies we are looking for, in every part of the world where Electrolux is present and at any time we are in need for that.This is why our partnership is so successful!“

Irina, AIESEC intern in Electrolux has graduated from being an intern as marketing controller within the floor care & small appliances organization in Stockholm to be Junior Marketing Manager within the same organization in Electrolux office Hungary. She says, “Being part of a culturally different work and life environment enlarged my perspectives. Also, working in the core business at the headquarter of an important global company exposed me to a professional environment and enabled me to better understand business matters related to the market and consumers.“

 
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.

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 60^th Anniversary.

If Michaela would use one word to describe her current experience in AIESEC it would be proud. Rightfully so, as she is one of seven people currently overseeing a national organization of over 2000 members from across Germany at just 26 years old.

Michaela holds the position of Vice President Communications, and one of her main responsibilities is to create a strategic communication plan for AIESEC in her country. A large task, but she is also managing a team to help her meet this goal, comprised of students studying in this field and with previous experience in the area. In her role she has the opportunity to learn how to design and implement marketing materials and campaigns across the country, design and maintain a national website and coordinate media requests, all to enable more people to know about AIESEC’s activities in Germany.

Although Michaela did not study Communications, it has always been an interest of hers, and the practical things she is learning in her role she sees as great value for her future career. She sees the value in having a broad background and experience in various fields, which for her have spanned sales, HR and now communications.

This experience so far has given Michaela more self-confidence and a more focused picture of what her future goals are. She has a clearer picture of herself and how others perceive her, which enabled her to be more flexible to changes, different environments and people.

Working in the international environment that AIESEC provides has made managing diversity a daily topic for Michaela, and a skill she finds quite valuable for her future in any career she decides to pursue.

When Ricardo first joined AIESEC in 1969, AIESEC in Colombia still operated on a small scale with only one local chapter and a small group of members. From there, he became Local Committee President. During his term, he realized that in order to grow his local chapter, it could not just focus on exchange, which at that time was the major activity in AIESEC.

Ricardo believed that the member base is very important part for an organization. Therefore, he started the initiative of developing external events in Colombia. AIESEC in Colombia began offering different student services at university and this not only attracted student involvement but also created an avenue for a better understanding of AIESEC.

Moreover, Colombian AIESEC members organized a theme project: the “World Energy Conference”, which was very successful in the early 1970s. Under Ricardo’s direction, there was a huge growth in AIESEC in Colombia including expansion to five more local chapters. He later also became National Committee President in 1972, and Advisory Council of AIESEC International a year later.

As AIESEC has a strong global image, Ricardo said, “AIESEC has the vision of the world to become more united, and I put the AIESEC way into my everyday life”.

Now Ricardo is the CEO of Juan Valdéz Coffee - a growing coffee company in Colombia. He feels that AIESEC is very much like a company; it has a good learning environment and it is the preparation for young people entering the real world.

One summer Sabine decided to do something different. She heard about AIESEC’s exchange program and after applying for that, she found herself heading to Colombia for her summer vacation.

Sabine spent her summer working for a social entrepreneur that had set up a foundation to build small cooperatives with single mothers. Her foundation would attract single mothers with little or no education and train them, and help them to set up an informal business by using the foundation’s business contacts for suppliers, etc. helping these single mothers become social entrepreneurs.
Her role there was to apply for non-corporate funding to help sustain the foundation and enable it to grow. During her time there she applied for more than 15 grants, and set up a system to enable them to continue her work once she left. The most rewarding day of her stay there was a few days before she left, when she received her first grant acceptance-it was a great personal accomplishment and she felt good leaving knowing that her work there had made a difference.
Although the experience was short, it made a definite impact on Sabine’s personal growth. “You really notice what you are doing when you are outside of what is normal for you” she explains. “You have to go through this process to really know yourself, your strengths, leadership skills, etc. You won’t find this by staying in

Living in Colombia also gave Sabine a chance to practice her Spanish that she had been studying at university.

While it was challenging at first, she learned quickly being surrounded by it all the time, and after about three months she was almost fluent.

Pertenecer a AIESEC ha sido una de las oportunidades más importantes  y enriquecedoras de mi vida.
 
Después de una intensa e integral experiencia AIESECa, desempeñando una gran variedad de roles estratégicos de liderazgo a nivel local, regional y nacional, me trace la meta de finalizar mi ciclo de aprendizaje personal y profesional aprovechando una de las mas grandes herramientas que nos ofrece la organización para lograrlo: Una practica laboral e internacional con uno de los mas importantes aliados globales.

Siempre había sido uno de mis sueños y grandes objetivos llegar a ser parte de un equipo de trabajo en una empresa mundial, líder en su campo, una empresa administrada por los mas altos estándares de calidad y efectividad, con un alto nivel de excelencia en sus resultados, una empresa que tuviera una fuerte cultura organizacional internacional y sus valores claramente definidos, una compañía que estuviera en la capacidad de reconocer mis conocimientos, talentos, experiencia previa y que pudiera convertirse en mi mejor soporte para crecer  tanto a nivel personal como profesional y fue en la primera compañía mundial, líder en logística, Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN-DHL), donde encontré todo esto y mucho mas. 

Ahora, me encuentro trabajando en el área de “Procurement  Europe, Middle East & Africa countries, EMEA“. Un departamento bastante dinámico, en el cual estoy logrando poner en practica todo el aprendizaje que obtuve como recién graduada en Ingeniería Industrial de la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira, así como, participar activamente en equipos integrados por directivos de los cargos mas importantes a nivel global de la compañía , en la dirección de relevantes proyectos.

No me cabe duda que esta valiosa experiencia , es la mejor oportunidad que tengo en este momento de contribuir con mis capacidades profesionales y de liderazgo y al mismo tiempo continuar ganando mas conocimientos y experiencia en la administración de negocios, logística, recursos humanos, entre otros, en un nivel corporativo internacional y en un ambiente completamente dinámico y competitivo.

Durante todo mi tiempo de pertenencia a AIESEC he estado convencida de la gran importancia de tomar una experiencia internacional de aprendizaje o un intercambio  para  perfeccionar nuestras carreras en la organización. Sin embargo, ahora que la estoy viviendo  no solo estoy convencida sino que estoy totalmente segura de que es la mejor forma de lograrlo.

Deutsche Post World Net, hasta el momento ha cumplido perfectamente mis expectativas  y las esta excediendo. Ser parte de uno de los grupos de entrenados mas grandes en el mundo en una ciudad y un país  con una amplia riqueza cultural e histórica como lo son Bonn y  Alemania respectivamente, son dos razones más que suficientes para estar muy orgullosa y feliz de haber sido  miembro activa de AIESEC en Colombia, capitulo Pereira  y de seguir conformando esta maravillosa familia mundial AIESECa.

Una ve mas reitero y comparto con ustedes que:

“Ser AIESECo es más que una palabra y más que un título, es algo que se lleva en el corazón.”

Bonn, Alemania. Enero 17 de 2009.

We’re just in the process of setting up this blog to have the coolest and most inspiring stories from around the AIESEC network! Stay tuned!