New Brunswick education, international career
UNB alumna Amanda Hachey has been to Panama and Vietnam. Now
she's heading to Sweden this fall to study to be a leader in sustainable
business practices.
She's enrolled in the strategic leadership towards sustainability program at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden, and was one of only 65 successful applicants out of 700 from across the world.
"The program will allow me to develop a stronger business case for sustainability - and Sweden is leading edge in terms of sustainability," says Hachey, who graduated in 2004 with a business administration degree from UNB Saint John.
Hachey plans to be a consultant for sustainable business solutions in international development upon graduation. She believes the next generation of leaders must consider the environmental effects of their decisions in the long term, both on a local and global scale.
"There are so many great sustainable solutions already in existence and the opportunity exists for leaders to adopt, encourage, and improve these solutions," she says.
"To move towards an improved economic system, an important step is to learn the situations of other countries and work with organizations within those regions to adapt long term plans that do not exploit the environment for current and future generations on a local and global scale."
No stranger to new places
Through UNB co-op terms at Enterprise Saint John and in Washington, DC, Hachey realized that she had an interest in business development and saw Latin America as an important influence on the Western hemisphere.
She then found her way to Panama City several years after graduation, where she worked in business development.
"Wanting to learn more about Latin America and learn Spanish, I found an internship through a Canadian International Development Agenca (CIDA) funded program to work in business development in Panama City," she says. "I ended up staying almost two years, starting up a small company and learning a lot about real estate development, foreign investment, Latin America, and the ability to work in Spanish."
Curious to learn more about the world, Hachey then took on another opportunity as a cooperative development advisor with the Centre for International Studies and Cooperation (CECI), in Da Nang, Vietnam.
"The agriculture cooperatives in rural Vietnam face tough competition for human resources and fair prices for agriculture supplies from the influx of private factories," says Hachey. "My role was to build business planning and marketing capacity within the rural agricultural cooperatives so that they could improve their services to the local farmers and to better compete against the private sector.
"It has been an amazing experience living and working in Vietnam for a year."
Opportunities start here
On top of spending a work term with the NAFTA leaders program in Washington, DC, Hachey spent a semester abroad in Poitiers, France during her time at UNB Saint John. She also traveled to Boston, Mass. as a delegate for the Harvard Model UN.
As a UNB student, she was involved in numerous clubs and societies; she spent time as president of both the Business Administration Society and Grad Class Committee, was a peer mentor and language helper, and member of the women's rowing crew.
She credits the size of UNB Saint John for providing her with so many opportunities.
"In the small community provided at UNB Saint John I was able to take advantage of all of these things in a short time; at a larger school competition for such opportunities would have been much higher and I would not have been able to accomplish half as much."
