Michael McGill, Vice President of AIESEC Strathclyde
My name is Michael McGill, and I am a student at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. I first encountered AIESEC at Fresher’s Fair, where I wanted to get involved with something productive outside of attending my lectures and improve my professional and personal skills. That was 3 years ago and I’m still coming back for more.
I started getting involved with the Business Development team, which gave me the opportunity to research the business environment in Glasgow, contact companies about the service that AIESEC can provide and attend networking events. I chose to get involved with this because from a very early stage, I realized that AIESEC is all about challenges. It encourages you to take part in something outside of your comfort zone and to take responsibility for something, and at that point I think the biggest responsibility I had accepted was brushing my own teeth. I was studying English at the time, which did not allow me to gain any experience of this nature, and I thought that having that in my locker would get me ahead of the game. Boy was I right. I also got involved in writing a couple of articles for AIESEC, and I got my first article published in the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce magazine in February 2008. Which was awesome!
From there, I have never looked back. I attended an AIESEC UK conference the same month the article got published, and was absolutely inspired by the people and the opportunities available within the organisation. I ran for a role on the leadership team of AIESEC Strathclyde, leading the Business Development team and devising a strategy for how we would be successful in the next year, and was successful in getting it. This was the decisive action in my AIESEC experience: realizing the values of the organisation were aligned with my own and committing myself to a year of being involved in all running it in Glasgow. It was the best decision I’ve ever made.
AIESEC is essentially an organisation that allows students to develop themselves by participating and running a foreign exchange programme. Business Development is the element that works with companies in their area to create opportunities for people going on exchange. Without Business Development, there would be nowhere for these enthusiastic students to go and nothing to do. And in AIESEC Strathclyde, no foreign AIESEC’ers had come over in 6 years! Which made it an even more exciting achievement to have successfully brought 2 interns over to work in the City Council within 6 months of being elected on to the leadership team, when no-one had attempted to get interns in to the public sector before. We got recognised for this by winning the National Award for Business Development out of 23 universities in the UK, which was an amazing feeling. This only whetted my appetite for more challenging experiences, so I ran for the leadership team again and presented myself for a wide variety of opportunities.
The most challenging of all of these was the opportunity to run the conference that had inspired me to be more involved in AIESEC. 200 delegates, 4 days, a budget of over £20,000, and a team of 9 people organising it all in a hotel in Nottingham. After around 2 months of preparation, the conference was a great success, and all the conference objectives were achieved. This is the most rewarding experience I have had in my life as I proved to myself and others that I could complete a project of this magnitude, show true leadership by making it a success, and have fun while doing it!
Now my term on the leadership team of AIESEC Strathclyde is over, but the AIESEC experience is not complete just yet. I am going to Sri Lanka to teach English for 2 months with 3 friends who are also AIESEC’ers, and I can’t wait! I’ve never been to Asia before, or even away from home for more than 3 weeks, so this will be one of the experiences that will define not only my university experience, but my entire life! I am so thankful that I took that chance back in October 2007 to attend my first AIESEC meeting, and I’m looking forward to more foreign exchanges and new experiences in the future.