大家好! I am Luisa Offori and I am currently a junior at Pitt majoring in Supply Chain Management, Marketing, and Global Management with a minor in Chinese. I am from Minneapolis, Minnesota and I was born in London, England so travel is something I have become accustomed to growing up all these years. I am extremely excited for the opportunity to go to Shanghai, China for the Spring semester and can’t wait to live in a new city for three months.

On campus, I’m involved in a few organizations within the business school. I’m in the Society for International Business, Roberto Clemente Minority Business Association, and the professional fraternity Phi Gamma Nu. Professionally, I think my internship experience has really helped me focus in on my career goals. This past summer I interned at a brokerage operations firm called DST Systems as a Strategy and Analysis Intern, and this upcoming summer I’ll be interning with Cigna through their Operations Leadership Program. In the future I hope to work in either strategy and operations consulting or healthcare strategy and operations. Further on in my career I’d like to become a lawyer and work in corporate law.

I chose the GBI: Shanghai program because I want to be able to fully immerse myself in Chinese culture, and I think being abroad for a semester will help facilitate that. The summer after my freshman year at Pitt, I was lucky enough to study abroad through Plus 3 China – and that simply wasn’t enough time. I completely fell in love with China from the food, the sightseeing, and the people so I realized I needed to go back and this time for a much longer duration. Personally, I really want to utilize my Chinese more and communicate with native speakers, so I can get better at it. I remember how nervous I was to use my Chinese when I went for Plus 3, but utilizing it helped me become much more comfortable speaking the language and I realized I was actually pretty good at it. Going back this time, I now have 5 semesters of Chinese under my belt, so I’m confident that I can use it to communicate for most of my time abroad. Academically, I’m really interested in diving more into my major classes. I’ll be taking 5 courses abroad: International Marketing, International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, Global Workforce Management and Change, Managing Global Supply Chains and a Classical Chinese Philosophy Course. I’m especially interested in the Chinese Philosophy class and seeing what it fully entails. In addition to that, I’ll be doing an internship abroad so I’m excited for the opportunity to work in a corporate environment and see how the professional environment in China differs from the professional environment in the US.

Overall, I can’t wait to go back to China and do so with one of my best friends at Pitt! It’ll be great seeing the city with her and getting to explore it a second time – three years later! The next time I post I’ll be in the “Paris of the East”! 再见！