A LUISS success story: Luca Bunkheila's year in Shanghai

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Wed, 04/02/2014 - 13:39

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Substance, beauty and charm: these are the three words that sum up Luca Bunkheila’s experiences as he earned two master’s degrees through the Double Degree program at LUISS and the University of Fudan in Shanghai.

It all started during a class while he was doing his bachelor’s degree: "My private law professor told us that he was going to teach in Shanghai for the Double Degree students in Management, and told us it was an incredible experience. From that moment on, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.”

So it was an everyday class in private law at LUISS that gave Luca the impetus to apply for the double degree program in China and in Italy. Then he took off for a year in Shanghai: "Thanks to this experience, my life has dramatically changed for the better, both professionally and personally; I acquired skills that have opened so many doors and allowed me to get my foot in the door at Barilla, a company where I always dreamed of working."

Now Luca is working in the sales and marketing area of the Italian food group after following a path that was “relatively straightforward, but took a number of steps.” It was the Double Degree that formed "a solid base on which I could build this path and which helped me visualize where I wanted to go."

In Shanghai, says Luca, " time passes twice as quickly and you feel like you are at the center of the world." But the most important aspect of the double degree was its ability to "provide an open-mindedness that is difficult to find elsewhere." The biggest reward was learning how to overcome difficulties "and realizing, once I was back in Italy, that I had developed tougher skin and could face anything. Afterwards, everything seemed so much easier.”

An educational experience as well as a life experience. Luca and his colleagues still recall "the nights spent in Shanghai and the time when, after 50 hours on a train they reached Tibet. It was during one of his many trips that Luca thought: "Did I ever imagine that I’d be here, learning Chinese? Did I ever think that I would experience so many emotions in so few months?" What for him was the added value of this program were the so-called "soft skills" that he had the opportunity to acquire: "I developed the skills that companies are looking for, which you can’t learn from books: communication, teamwork, managing conflict and understanding cultural differences.”