Beedie undergrad Ashlee Liu to represent SFU at South American Business Forum

by Jevta Lukic

Ashlee Liu is no stranger to global business and travel. The undergraduate student at the Beedie School of Business, who moved to North America from Asia and is preparing for an internship with BPI Group in France next year, says she is excited to use an upcoming development opportunity in Argentina to better understand the business environment across South America.

Liu is about to embark on her next global adventure — representing the Beedie School of Business — at the South American Business Forum (SABF). The annual forum’s aim is to engage young leaders in a dialogue about the region’s sustainable development and corporate ethics.

“I am really interested in the business society in South America,” said Liu. “I knew they had experienced a really bad recession, and I really wanted to listen to other people’s opinions and see for myself how things have changed.”

The Beedie student is only one of 100 students who have been selected out of a pool of 3000 applicants from over 110 countries to attend the forum. The students were chosen based on their essay on the topic of South America “Facing Exponential Times.” This year’s event is being held in Buenos Aires, Argentina from August 5-7, and is hosted by Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA).

“The production, dissemination and use of knowledge must become the main opportunity for growth in South American countries in the future,” said Liu. “South America needs to think big and bold about the technology trends in the future and act early and consistently from today.”

In March of this year, the young leader also placed third in the Focus 2040 competition in Toronto. The competition asked Canadian students to envision the employees and the workplace environments in the year 2040. Liu impressed the judges with her interpretation of the future workplace that placed emphasis on the global talent program- an international pool of freelance workers who fluidly move across borders in order to satisfy global employee demands.

“Competitions and conferences like this are a great way to see what young people around the world are doing,” said Liu. “We are all the same age, but all doing very different things at this age.”

For more information about the forum, visit http://www.sabf.org.ar/forum/