Ziyu Zhou, from Duke Kunshan’s Class of 2022, has landed herself a place at the prestigious Fuqua Business School of Duke University after a transformative four years of undergraduate study.
At DKU she studied philosophy, but through the university’s multidisciplinary curriculum, interactions with fellow students from different disciplines and internships she discovered a passion for the business world, and ways in which it intersects with her humanities degree.
“It’s been an interesting and metamorphic journey,” she says. “I have developed personal resources I did not have before, gained knowledge beyond the classroom and found a path in life that joins my philosophical side with my practical one.”
Zhou’s journey to the business world began when she found herself drawn to classes that applied philosophy to real-life situations, such as the ethics of paying kidney donors. Buoyed by DKU’s interdisciplinary curriculum, which allowed her to engage with a wide range of subjects, she deepened her knowledge of business and other topics, and applied her philosophical skills to them. That included internships at IBM and AstraZeneca, where she solidified her plans to study business post-DKU.
At AstraZeneca she used data to identify potential sales opportunities for an online Chinese medical platform.
“This internship experience strengthened my ability to tell a story using data as well as how to support recommendations to make them more convincing,” she says.
At IBM her main task was to produce a demonstration on the business benefits of the company’s intelligent workflow software.
“During a meeting at IBM that was about blockchain industries, I was able to contribute, because I had learned a lot from on the subject from data science students at DKU,” she says. “I think my colleagues were a little surprised because they assumed that being a philosophy student, that I wouldn’t know much about the blockchain industry.”
Among the diversity of people and courses at DKU, the long classroom discussions about a broad range of issues, and the nature of the teaching that encouraged debate, Zhou not only developed an interest in business, but also found a new confidence.
“I was a person with few words in high school and even a little bit introverted, because I seldom talked with others and I seldom shared ideas with others,” she says. “When I share this fact with friends, none of them believe me, because now I have more confidence to express my opinions.”
She puts that down in part to the “pioneering spirit that permeates DKU,” which she says consciously motivated her to try new things with no fear.
Now, instilled with that new-found confidence, Zhou is ready to begin the next chapter of her life, studying for a master’s degree in quantitative management business analytics at the Fuqua Business School of Duke University.
“One thing I learned at DKU is also how to talk with people and how to work with people from different backgrounds and with varying perspectives,” she says. “I think I will get more chances to experience this at Fuqua and to work with others, as the school is famous for its teamwork spirit.”
After the 10-month course is complete, her longer-term ambition is to “still think as a philosopher, while at the same time doing something more practical and realistic in the real world,” she says.
