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Melbourne Stories – Stories worth hearing!!
Hosted by:
July 28, 2016 @ 10:30 pm - July 29, 2016 @ 12:00 am
Ed Smith was born in Melbourne and was one of the first cohort of students to study Chinese as part of the ground-breaking program established at Camberwell Grammar in the 1960s.
He continued his study at Monash (while undertaking a Bachelor of Information Systems) and the University of Melbourne, as well as in China, where he studied at the Beijing International Studies University, and the Johns Hopkins Centre at Nanjing University (on scholarship from the Australia China Council).
Ed worked in the Australian Embassy, Beijing with the Immigration Department, and helped establish the Australian Consulate General in Guangzhou with Austrade in the early 1990's . His rare bilingualism and cultural fluency made him highly sought after, and enabled him to develop a very successful business consulting practice that spanned corporate, government and academic circles. In 2007, he established the Australia-China Alumni Association, a not-for-profit organization that now engages 16,000+ alumni across China.
Altogether Ed lived in China, working and raising a family, for 22 years, from the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen and through China's rapid development and prosperity.
Ed returned to Melbourne with his family in 2014 and is now one of the top philanthropic fundraisers in the development office at Monash university.
Ed will share his insights into what living in Beijing can teach us about our own city, and how Melbourne can best respond to our growing engagement with China. He will be joined by his wife, business partner and long-time collaborator, Cecilia Fan. Cecilia is the Publisher of China Higher Ed and the Managing Consultant at the Beijing Consulting Group.