Atlanta, September 17 -- An internship is paying big rewards for a recent graduate of Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business.
Xiang Zahn, who received his Master’s degree from Robinson’s Institute of International Business (IIB) in May, was named today to head Summit Bank’s newly opened trade office in Shanghai. Zang interned at the bank in Atlanta and was assigned the task of preparing the application and creating the business plan for the new Shanghais office.
Karen Loch, who is the director of Robinson’s IIB, said “This is truly a unique story. It does illustrate, however, how talented students in the right circumstance can truly maximize internship opportunities.”
Xiang, a native of Beijing, will be responsible for developing financial relationships with potential customers and banks in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Summit has five braches in Georgia and two in California that primarily serve the east and south Asian communities.
After graduating from Beijing’s Tsinghua University, Zahn came to Robinson in 2001. He interned at Summit Bank from September 2003 to April 2004. His sponsor was Summit Bank’s President David Yu.
Robinson College’s Master’s of International Business program requires students to be fluent in a second language and intern for at least four months. Most U.S. students do their internships in other countries, while many international students, such as Zahn, intern with local companies. Robinson students have interned in Atlanta with such prestigious companies as BellSouth International, Motorola, AMC Inc., Bianco and Hopkins and KHInternational. Throughout the world, Robinson students are placed with a variety of firms including IBM in Mexico, AON Consulting in the United Kingdom, The Coca Cola Company in Argentina, Siemens in Germany, and Accenture in France. According to Loch, “Robinson has an extremely strong pool of talented students enrolled in the IIB program and we always welcome interest from companies who would be interested in partnering with us on internships.”
The J. Mack Robinson College of Business is one of the top-ranked business schools. The College's Flex (part-time) MBA program has been listed in the top ten by U.S. News for the past nine years and its undergraduate business program is ranked among the top 50 in the nation. The College's Executive MBA program is listed on The Financial Times list of the world's top ranked offerings and BusinessWeek magazine ranks it 24th in the world.
