1. Dear Sir/ Madam,
I am a young entrepreneur with 16+ years of professional career development in various
higher education sectors across the Asia Pacific region. I have extensive general
management experience in sales, marketing, human resources and business
development, with proven results in each. My background is, in a word, diverse. I have
worked with international public examination boards, established my own school,
collaborated with the education departments of various governments for different
projects, and contributed to bringing about the influx of global language education
schools the region over.
From 2003 – 2010, I set up a school in Hong Kong with an initial investment pool of
HKD 500,000 and commenced operations with only three employees. By 2010, we
successfully established 3 branches of the school in Hong Kong, and a joint venture
school in China. The annual turnover of our business from 2009-10 was HKD 15
million.
My early career saw some great experiences. Over the years, I trained myself to foster
a “can do” mind-set, and it has worked wonders in transforming my teams and working
partners as well. The success of my early career experiences factored in to my
familiarity with communication skills, team building and people development - the most
importance factors for any company to be able to maintain sustainable growth year on
year. We may not have had the strongest business foundations or financial support,
despite this, we eventually became the pioneers of many training projects, and this is
because we continuously strive for innovation, whether it be in workplace practices or in
the development of training content.
We designed a Mandarin-language “Train-the-Trainer Training” a project that was so
new in the market that no other reference case existed for it. We had to start from
scratch with everything, from design the program to developing its content and training
and recruiting instructors, to monitoring and evaluating lessons. As an experienced

2. school operator, I have always focused internally on the quality of teaching and on
employee satisfaction – as this tends to naturally bring about customer satisfaction.
These are crucial values for any aspiring education service provider to have.
I am currently the Country Manager of Berlitz Languages Limited in Hong Kong, one of
the major business markets in the Asia Pacific region. Berlitz has instilled in me different
and equally-effective set of management skills and insights. At Berlitz, we have a
world-class teaching methodology for instructor training, as well as a systematic
learning cycle tracking system to monitor the student learning process. The experience
has taught me to foster a detail-oriented mindset, as well as a mentality geared towards
achieving a high level of quality control. We have about 40 instructors for several
different languages, with an hourly rate as their payment base. It is my job to ensure
that the support network for instructors is under good condition during peak business
hours and to maintain the instructors’ earnings and teaching quality at a standard
level. It here where my business knowledge of co-related businesses became fully
developed and my general management skills further improved. On the job knowledge
and soft skill transformation are some of the major factors behind my success.
During my period of service for City and Guild, one of my major projects was to promote
the English examination "IESOL" to the local government accreditation department, as
well as various schools, and distribution channels. Besides this, I have had to respond
to regular quality inspections and documentation audits for all related parties. We
provide quarterly training for distribution channels specifically, their managers and
instructors. Thus, during our training sessions we can establish a strong relationship
with them as well as comply with the standards of the examination broad. Over the
years, I have become increasingly familiar with channel management and public
examination regulations and procedures, as well as with liaising with accreditation
departments in the Greater China region.
I graduated from the EMBA program of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in April
2015, which is a 2-year part time Master’s degree program. The CUHK Business

3. School’s EMBA program ranks as 13th worldwide among similar programs in the
Financial Times Business School rankings. It was a considerable challenge in terms of
time management to balance family life, study and business management, but I am
honored to have learnt from such a diverse program, over the course of which I built up
a very strong personal network over its 2 year duration.
I am accustomed to a fast-paced environment where deadlines are a priority and
handling multiple jobs simultaneously is the norm. Continuous interaction with internal
and external clients, as well as employees from all level of management and operations,
has strengthened my interpersonal and negotiation skills. I approach my occupation
with a strong sense of urgency, and work with grace under pressure.
Cheers,
Tony Lee