Sunway hosts Harvard’s Asia Leadership Trek

The Jeffrey Cheah Foundation (JCF) and Sunway Education Group (Sunway Ed) hosted 31 graduate students from top universities in the world who joined the Asia Leadership Trek during their stay in Malaysia recently.
The latest initiative is in line with the Sunway Ed’s continuous efforts to partner with some of the world’s leading institutions to bring world-class global education to Malaysians.
Harvard University and Sunway Ed recently formed a special relationship with the establishment of two Jeffrey Cheah professorships at Harvard and the establishment of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia (JCI) in Sunway University, following the gift of USD6.2 million to Harvard University by the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation.
“I am pleased that the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and Sunway are able to host such a fine and highly dynamic group of graduate students from the very top and renowned universities in the US and indeed the world,” said Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah, founding trustee of the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation, who is also chancellor of Sunway University and chairman of Sunway Group.
“It is extremely gratifying as this is in line with the spirit of the establishment of the Jeffrey Cheah Professorial Chairs at Harvard and the setting up of the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia, whose objective is to facilitate two-way flow of faculty, students and knowledge between the institutions for the benefit of our communities,” he says.
The Asia Leadership Trek, an industry trek, is organised by the Asia Leadership Committee under the auspices of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
The trek is a much-anticipated three-week journey through five cities in Asia, namely Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Seoul. It explores the theme “Asia in the 21st Century” through the lenses of public leadership, education, and entrepreneurship.
As part of the programme in Malaysia, the graduate students from Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy facilitated a public conference titled “21st Century Malaysia: Public Leadership, Education and Entrepreneurship”, at the Sunway University Hall.
The conference offered young professionals, leaders, students and forward-thinking Malaysians an extraordinary opportunity to learn from Harvard-trained workshop facilitators and a line-up of local leaders such as Ministry of Education secretary general II Datuk Seri Dr Zaini Ujang and member of the Board of Directors at the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute, Tan Sri Dr Ramon Navaratnam.
The keynote speaker at the conference Tunku Zain Al-’Abidin Tuanku Muhriz, trustee of Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and founding president of Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs.
During the conference, aspiring students also learned how to apply and gain admittance to these prestigious universities from those with experience.