Julia Chen-Hsuan Lee, MSCM '20
Julia Chen-Hsuan Lee's start in supply chain management came from a real business leadership experience she had during her undergraduate degree at Soochow University in Taiwan. While studying there, Julia founded a startup to support the people of Nepal, after an earthquake struck the country in 2015. Her startup created opportunities for Nepali to use local resources, like the Himalayan nettle, to make bags and earn money by selling them abroad.
The startup gave Julia hands-on experience managing a product's life cycle, from production to point-of-sale to delivery. "I had to do things like find more factories and local workshops, and manage logistics — that's what opened up my interest in supply chain management," Julia says.
After graduating, Julia went on work as a purchasing specialist and a replenishment specialist at two companies in Taiwan with robust supply chains. She says both job experiences further opened her eyes to the complexities of large-scale supply chains — and prompted her to consider how a master's degree could further expand what she knew about the field.
After researching a variety of masters programs, Julia says she recognized the Michigan Ross Master of Supply Chain Management as the best fit for her. She was drawn to the fact that the program was STEM-certified for international students, a certification that allows her to work in the United States for 36-months after graduation to receive training through work experience.
Equally important to the STEM certification was the Ross commitment to action-based learning, and how the program emphasizes, as she says, actually "doing the work," rather than just focusing on learning through lectures and readings. Julia says she only wanted to enroll in a program that would give her the opportunity to put her learning into action.
Once at Ross, in addition to diving into course topics like project management, data analytics, and operations, Julia leveraged the power of the Michigan Ross alumni network. During her fall break, she flew out to both San Francisco and Seattle to meet with Ross alumni she had connected with over LinkedIn. Julia says the alumni were quick to invite her out for a visit and show her around their workspaces. What's nice about the Ross alumni network, Julia says, is that:
If I want to learn more about a function or opportunity at a certain company, there's always someone from Ross that can connect me to that company.
Beyond the alumni network, Julia also speaks to her experience as an international student, and how she started the program having never been to campus before. Her first impressions? "The people here are really friendly — I've been to other cities in the U.S., and I feel like people in Ann Arbor are really friendly and polite. It was also helpful to come here and to be able to live in the same building on campus as other students in my program." From skiing and snowboarding trips and to potluck dinners with fellow MSCM students, to social events with the broader one-year master's cohort (which includes both master of accounting and master of management students), Julia was able to build her on-campus network quickly.
After graduation, Julia hopes to come full circle with her passion for making a positive impact, and pursue a role in procurement or demand planning that focuses on supply chain sustainability. She says an elective course she took on the "Base of the Pyramid" concept and the topic, “Sustainability Through Innovative Operations” in Global Operations Conference held by Tauber Institute for Global Operations piqued her interest in this area of supply chain management.