Jason Huo, a December 2003 IMBA graduate from Guangzhou, China, is the new International Customer Service Specialist at Orrville, Ohio-based J.M. Smucker Co., maker of Smucker’s jams and jellies.
Huo will have responsibility for order and inventory management and export relations. He’ll be involved in coordinating sales, production, warehousing and shipping to South America, the Caribbean, Asia and Europe. He also expects to be a systems “super-user” and troubleshooter, as well.
Huo chose Baldwin-Wallace College while still in China. While working for a French advertising company there, he decided to follow in the footsteps of one of his managers, who obtained an MBA in the U.S. He found B-W through an educational agent in China, contacted the school via e-mail and was impressed with the response.
“It was very professional, very nice, with respect,” he said.
Huo arrived in America in August 2001 - a month before the World Trade Center attacks that would vastly complicate student travel to the U.S.
Through B-W, Huo obtained an internship with the World Trade Center / Cleveland, which he believes was instrumental in helping prepare him for work at an American company.
“It was a very good opportunity in terms of gaining some real experience working for an American organization,” he said. “It provided a good position from which to gain a lot of knowledge dealing with issues like international trade and import-export regulations.”
At first, he said, his WTC stint involved “a lot of phone calls, typing and office work,” but eventually it encompassed areas such as marketing research and website management that helped ready him for his job with Smucker’s.
Huo praised the faculty for the success of the IMBA program.
“I got a lot of help from the professors here,” he said. “One very important point is that a professor should not only be a guy who is good at his subject, or is a good businessman or consultant. A good professor should also know a better way to teach his subject to others.” Even students whose first language is not English can learn and understand the subject matter because of the care taken by the B-W faculty, Huo said.
He particularly enjoyed Dr. Pierre David’s classes in international logistics, and appreciated the diversity of subjects available to the IMBA student.
Small class size provided ample opportunity to talk one-on-one with professors and assess his progress, he added.
During his student days, Huo was a student ambassador in student affairs, worked in the computer lab and was a graduate assistant.
He urged international students to be socially active, even though it is often difficult.
“If you don’t take the first step, you can get isolated. The first semester after I came here, I stayed in the dorm on the Internet. That’s really bad,” he said. “My English did not improve, and it was frustrating.” In his second semester, he became more active, met more people and learned more about the culture in which he was living.
“As foreign students, we need to reach out,” he advised.
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