Written by Hamsini Satchithananthan Salmelainen, Executive MBA 2023 student.
As you walk through the large open spaces and climb the colourful staircases of Cambridge Judge Business School overhearing snippets of livened debate on headline global topics such as “are governments and regulators keeping up with the development of AI?”, or catching the tail end of a discussion endeavouring to work out the location of the international business trip with as much passion (but perhaps less sentiment) as the choice of honeymoon destination, one could easily mistake the buzz and its vocal creators to be one of a specific type of person; a cookie cutter suited and booted whose ambitious nature led them to the business school of the world’s third oldest university where tradition and history have an almost symbiotic relationship with modern thinking and advancement. The most brilliant aspect of this mistake is the truth that beyond an eagerness to learn, there is no archetypal student. Not a single one of us has walked the same footsteps, lived the same experiences, faced the same hurdles nor overcome the same challenges.
My own journey that led me to Judge Business School in the summer of 2023 began earlier with the experiences of my grandparents and my parents as they navigated genocide, hardship, and severe limitations to create paths of possibilities for me under a warm, disciplined and relatively loving roof that was frequently disturbed by the tragic loss of family, property and rights. Those paths led to experiences that at their worst positioned me as a target of abuse, racism, assault, unfair and unequal treatment and at their best raised and nurtured me into becoming a continuous learner, a resilient mother, an experienced friend and colleague.
The stories that tell the tales of our journeys to date are vast and distinctive, and as they become interwoven for a series of moments in our lives, I hope you and others will find a quiet moment to indulge in reading anecdotes and thought pieces of those that spent some time at Judge Business School and ponder on the variety of identities displayed in this editorial exhibition.
Welcome to The Kaleidoscope Series…
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