Last Saturday 14 June, it was very much a case of deja vu for Wayne Scott when he returned to Bond University from the US to attend the MBA Graduation ceremony.
Twenty-four years ago in June 1990, Wayne - a member of Bond’s inaugural MBA student cohort – graduated with his MBA. But this year, Wayne was attending the MBA Graduation ceremony of his son Jeremiah, who not only graduated with honours, but as the Valedictorian of his class.
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Jeremiah Scott has fond memories of the newly-built Bond campus as a six-year old when his father Wayne was studying and the whole family relocated from LA to the Gold Coast for a year.
“I can remember playing on campus and looking in awe at this huge sandstone arch which was back dropped by a magnificent lake,” Jeremiah said.
“It was all new and fresh and at that time I could never have envisioned that in the future I would cross under that same arch many times on my way to and from class,” he said.
After graduating and moving back to America, Wayne worked in taxation and went on to open his own business, Sunkap Enterprises, in 1997, which today has over 1,000 clients.
“My MBA gave me some very important tools to be successful in business,” Wayne said.
Wayne’s experience at Bond and his success in business were key factors in Jeremiah’s decision to return to Bond with his family, to complete his MBA in 2013.
“There was no better place than Bond, and the Gold Coast, to do my MBA. Bond was without a doubt my number one choice,” Jeremiah said.
He said in addition to the accelerated program, which allowed him to complete his MBA in just one year, the key benefit of studying at Bond was the opportunity to learn with, and more importantly learn from, people from all over the world, which would never have happened if he had stayed in California to study.
“The most memorable learning experiences I had at Bond came from interactions and collaboration with my cohort,” Jeremiah said.
“Because Bond goes out of its way to bring together people from all over the world, you converse, educate, negotiate and socialise with your cohort and establish an international network and support system that spans the globe.
“From my MBA cohort alone, my network now includes a banker in Iceland, a CIO in Germany, a pilot in France, a VP in Hong Kong, and a CFO in the US - and for each of these individuals, there are 5,000 more Bondies out there making their mark on global society.”
On completion of his MBA, Jeremiah has returned to LA to lead and continue to grow the highly-successful family business, Sunkap Enterprises.
“The greatest legacy for the future I can give back to my family and to Bond for what I’ve earned and learned, is to be successful,” he said.
With Jeremiah’s 4-year-old son Jacob already saying “Dad, when I grow up, I want to go to Bond University” – who knows, maybe we’ll see a third generation of the Scott family studying here at Bond in about 20 years’ time!
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