Monthly Archives: Sep 2021

EIA 057 How Professor Laurie Underwood is Working in and with China Post Covid?

Audio Interviews, Entrepreneurs in Action, Entrepreneurs Interview, Entrepreneurs.Asia, General
Laurie Underwood
Laurie Underwood

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:14 — 30.8MB)

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Laurie Underwood is an American professor, author and consultant specializing in cross-cultural business communications

She has studied worked and lived in Shanghai since 2002

Together with Prof Juan Fernandez at CEIBS, she has co-authored China CEO (2006), China Entrepreneur  (2009) and most recently China CEO II (2020). The audio book was released in June 2021. Book links below.

After around 10 years of work in Corporate Communications (most recently as Communications Director Asia Pacific for Air Liquide) she got her doctorate finished in 2019 and switched to consulting and teaching. She is a senior consultant with Sino Associates, focusing on intercultural business communications and crisis communications, and she teaches at several business schools including NYU Shanghai, University of Aberdeen, SKEMA and EmLyon.

Today, she speaks with us about the realities of working in China post covid, working with China if you cannot travel there because of covid, and more generally sharing advice from China CEOs on the challenges and opportunities of doing business with China today.

As well as

  • The answer to the most Northern City in the USA
  • Laurie’s career journey
  • Moving to China and reasons for staying
  • Career transitions and motivation for the changes
  • The origins of China CEO and China CEO II, 
  • The differences in the people performing the role of CEO in China
  • A hint at how they became CEOs
  • The routes to becoming a CEO
  • The personality traits that a CEO should have to not fail in China
  • How someone can fail at being a CEO in China
  • Laurie’s perspective on Westerners recently trying to move to live and work in China
  • The speed of change and the changes that have taken place
  • The freedom to reinvent yourself
  • What does the word “culture” mean to Laurie?
  • What do the different generations think about Career, Work and Entrepreneurship 
  • How Laurie’s classmates careers have changed
  • The recent need for Laurie’s knowledge and experience
  • Laurie explains why she isn’t a CEO
  • What she has learned from CEOs, and as a professor and consultant

so now without further delay let’s begin