Scholarship / An experience which has given me an opportunity to be a better leader in the future [10]

Hi all, I'm planning to apply for Chevening Scholarship this year. Any feedback would be very appreciated. Thanks!

MY LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE

My leadership experience started when I was young. It was my parents who taught me to hold on three things of leadership values: manage, responsible and committed. It started with simple tasks. For instance, they kept on reminding me to make up the bed after waking up, to prepare the books for morrow's lectures, et cetera. These responsibilities became a starting point for me to have bigger responsibilities and commitments as I grew up.

During high school, I was a member of the student council where I got a chance to become a head of organization leadership training committee. Such an opportunity had given me capabilities to manage an event. A few years later, when I was in college, I was active in a music club and the student union. I became the head of an event organizer for campus's music event and the head of human resources division in Math's student union. These activities entitled me to manage a bigger team with bigger goals which were harder as I could really feel more pressure than my previous experience in event management. Those experiences had helped me to be more skillful on project management where I could be more responsible and committed to delivering the best result.

Months after college, I landed a job as a xxx-role in a management consulting company where I'm currently working at. Applying the three values of leadership in my work, I managed to deliver my best performance and deliver my work on time. In result, I have moved up the ladder by becoming a Senior xxx-role. In the beginning of my new role, I had an important deliverable for a client with a very tight deadline. I'd been appointed as a team leader who's responsible to make sure our work meets the deadline, also I had to manage junior xxx-role by ensuring the quality of their deliverables. I guided them to how to do the analyses, by explaining about the client, the context, the problem and the approach to solve the problem. It's very hard and exhausting, but I felt so happy since I knew that they were learned something through the process. In the end, I successfully delivered the result to the client on time. The client was very satisfied with our result and after the meeting, my manager was really impressed with my leadership performance. I was very happy with this experience because I made an impact not only for the client, but also for my team and my company. After that project, I've been given another follow-up project from the client and another responsibility as a second-line manager. Not only being responsible for team's work for deliverables, I also have to be responsible for career development of other junior team member. These responsibilities are very exciting and challenging for me as I must learn to manage both project and people. This ongoing experience has given me an opportunity to be a better leader in the future.

Scholarship / Becoming a Chevening scholar would widen my network and an opportunity to meet various experts [5]

Hi all, I'm still working on my networking essay for Chevening application. Any feedback would be appreciated. Many thanks!

A COLLABORATION THROUGH NETWORKING

As a professional and a future leader, the capability in networking is a must. Nevertheless, gaining a proper skill of networking is not an easy task. It is easy to meet new people in events and to exchange name cards, but it is difficult to hone the benefit from the newly created network. Being an employee in a consulting company has given me a chance to develop my networking skill. I have learned how to develop a network while giving a positive impact for both me and my network.

A few months ago, my company decided to create an advisory line of work with purpose to help non-profit organizations through analytics. The new line of work was very interesting for me that I wanted to volunteer. It was an opportunity to give an impact for society using my expertise in analytics field. The first task to contribute towards the advisory mission was to find a suitable non-profit organization for partnership. Ideally, the organization should own data to be analyzed. After spending two weeks to search potential organizations with the desirable criteria, I managed to find a suitable organization. It was an online crowdfunding platform which pools the fund for patients who were unable to afford their medical bills. The goal of the organization was to enable those less fortunate to access a decent healthcare. My next action was to contact the founder to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the team. During the meeting, I gave a proper introduction about myself and my company while explaining the proposition to improve their quality of works using data analytics. Thankfully, they were interested and agreed with our advisory proposal.

Following the agreement, my team thoroughly worked on their data. We did the data audit which helped them to have a view on the health of the data so that they can improve the quality accordingly. We also presented actionable insights for their marketing strategy in the form of tailored marketing based on the behavioral segmentation of the donors. They were impressed with the result and were eager to apply the solutions into their system. Maintaining this type of relationship is not an easy thing to do. As a result, I need to keep in touch with them so that we can have ongoing collaboration. For instance, we are currently exploring a way on how to enhance the customer engagement on their platform through a recommendation engine.

Conclusively, I believe that becoming a Chevening scholar would widen my network so that I can reach out to help more organizations with data-driven potential which have an aspiration to benefit society. Additionally, being a Chevening scholar would also give me an opportunity to meet various experts which will enrich my capabilities in solving real-world problems through analytics.

Scholarship / THREE CHOSEN COURSES TO DEVELOP MY CAREER IN ANALYTIC FIELD. Studying in UK Question [2]

Hi all, kindly review my essay for studying in UK questions. Any feedback is welcome! Thank you very much.

THREE CHOSEN COURSES TO DEVELOP MY CAREER IN ANALYTIC FIELD

Nowadays, many businesses have applied data-driven decision making to solve their company issue. As a Data Scientist who currently working in management consultant company has given me a valuable experience on solving client's problem in various sectors through data science. My working experience has prepared me to develop my current capabilities in consulting fields by exposing me to various problems in various industries, such as retail, broadcasting, telco, et cetera. My academic background in Mathematics has given me a solid ground to do simple analyses and modeling. However, I realized that I still have a big gap in terms of business strategy and advanced technical skills. My ultimate goal is becoming a talented data scientist which excels in both skills. Therefore, I have chosen three MSc courses that directly link my education and professional background with hoping that these courses will help me filling my knowledge gap and balancing the skills between strategy and technical skills.

My first choice is the MSc Business Analytics provided by XXX. This course is perfectly aligned with my purpose to unlock the key skills for an understanding of how companies can use data to make decisions and improve business performance. They offered the course of business strategy and predictive analytics, which can help me balancing the skills between business strategy and technical skills. Their end of the year practical consulting project is exciting for me since it will allow me to apply my knowledge by solving real-world problems.

As my second choice, the MSc Business Analytics at XXX will broaden knowledge about technical skills with their courses in data structures, machine learning, network analytics and optimization models. These will give me an additional benefit in terms of data science skills set which will make me stands out among another data scientists. Moreover, I'm interested with its collaboration project named XXX which jointly developed between the university and one of top management consultant. This scheme gives an opportunity for students to get consulting experience with business leaders offering data analytic services. With this project, I can hone my consulting skills further.

The MSc Business Analytics from the XXX is my third choice. They are offering to equip their students with the analytical and quantitative skills desired by businesses. I have a confidence that by learning their courses in the quantitative method, consultancy skills and project management will sharpen my business strategy skills. In addition, their three-month business project will allow me to work with professionals and expertise in various industries on how applying the data-driven decision making in their businesses. These learning experiences will help me to excel my performance as a professional data scientist in business analytics field.

I hope that these three courses will help me to develop my current capability in data science and consulting fields, and it will allow me to contribute more in terms of improving the quality of businesses in various industries.