October Update on the Farmleigh Fellowship and the 2011 MBS Asian Business Studies

We would like to give you an update on the Farmleigh Fellowship and the MBS Asian Business. 

Completion of the second term at Nanyang Business School (NTU).

All of the participants have successfully completed their second term at Nanyang Business School at NTU and feedback has been very positive from all stakeholders. Currently the Fellows are undertaking their second work placements in Singapore and various locations across the region and these will be completed on the 2nd of December.

Recruitment of Sponsoring Companies for the MBS Asian Business Studies 2012

We are pleased to announce that Diageo, Digicel, Ocuco, CIDF, DPS Engineering, Morgan McKinley, Microvision, Cut-e, Taxback, PCH, Agri Esprit, BioAtlantis, Amphibian and Treasury Holdings have all agreed to be sponsors so far for the MBS Asian Business Studies 2012. If you are interested in sponsoring a participant on next year’s programme, which starts in January 2012, please contact us. 

Recruitment and Candidate Selection Process for the Farmleigh MBS Asian Business 2012

The Farmleigh Fellowship has retained Cut-e, a world leader in people selection services and technology to support the recruitment process and online application portal for the program. We have just closed our online application portal and have a large pool of quality applicants to work with. All applicants have been invited to complete an online psychometric test after they have completed the online application form. Cut-e will then begin filtering the applicants' data to find the best fit candidates for our sponsoring companies based on their candidate profile and live business project.

The 1st stage screening interviews will run from the 24th until the 29th of October at UCC in Cork and the 2nd stage direct interviews with companies will run in November.

Visit to EMC on the 16th of September

Paul O’Neill of EMC organised a tour of its facilities in Singapore for the Fellows and gave an overview of EMC, the data storage industry and the latest trends on cloud computing. It was an extremely successful event and we are very grateful to Paul and his team for organising this.

Minister of State for Training and Development, Ciaran Cannon, visited Singapore on the 15th-16th September

Minister Cannon visited Singapore in and met the Farmleigh Fellows during a visit to NTU. The visit provided an excellent opportunity to profile the Fellows to the Minister, update the Irish government on the progress of the Farmleigh Fellowship and to strengthen ties in education between Ireland and Singapore.  We are indeed grateful to NTU, the Irish Ambassador and the team at the Irish Embassy for their help in making this an extremely productive and successful visit.

Morgan McKinley Workshop Event on the 29th of September.

Steve Carter of Morgan McKinley organised a workshop event for the Fellows on the 29th of September. The workshop dealt with various challenges and employment practices in Singapore and was well attended by the Fellows. On behalf of the Fellowship, we would like to thank Steve for his generosity and help in organising and facilitating this event.

Second Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin Castle on the 7th - 8th October, 2011

The Irish government hosted the second Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin Castle on the 7th-8th October, 2011. Over 300 leading members of the Irish diaspora including the Directors of the Farmleigh Fellowship attended the event and it provided an excellent opportunity to profile the Fellowship at the highest level and to present a proposal on how the Fellowship could be expanded. The Fellowship initiative was very well received by all and was seen by other delegates as a model for other regions to adopt for supporting a range of initiatives from entrepreneurial start-ups through to educational and non-academic programmes. Some of the key outcomes for the Fellowship were;

• A much higher profile of the Farmleigh Fellowship including extensive regional and national media exposure.

• The launch of Phase 2 of the Farmleigh Fellowship, with the vision of building a strategic cohort of 1000 young Irish professionals, equipped with the business, culture and communication skills necessary to succeed in Asia within 5 years. (Please see attached press release)

APIBF in Seoul on the 14th of October.

The Asia Pacific Irish Business Forum hosted its annual event in Seoul this year. This event focused on the opportunities for Ireland in Asia in the context of free trade agreements. Among the speakers were our Chairman, Fred Combe and two of the Fellows, Ciara Hickey and Ciaran Gallagher, who shared their experiences of the Farmleigh Fellowship with over 100 senior Irish leaders from across Asia