What separates a good MBA from a truly transformative one? For most professionals, the answer comes down to how far outside their comfort zone they are willing to go. Michiel Jonkman, a 2012 CEIBS graduate and Managing Partner at Benchmark International, made that leap – and more than a decade later, the returns are still compounding, according to his interview with MBATUBE.
The gap no textbook can fill
Many professionals arrive at the idea of an MBA after hitting a specific wall. They have experience. They have results. But something is missing. For Michiel Jonkman, the realisation came while working in private equity:
“I felt that I was missing the theoretical framework to understand how everything around me worked.”
That gap – between instinct and understanding, between doing and knowing why – is exactly what a rigorous MBA is designed to close. But the school you choose determines how wide that gap can become, and how permanently it gets filled. Choosing to close it in Shanghai, at one of Asia’s most respected institutions, adds a dimension that is difficult to replicate in a more familiar setting.
Culture is not something you can read about
One of the most distinctive things about the CEIBS MBA is where it happens. Michiel came in already well-traveled and internationally minded. He describes valuing his Dutch culture precisely because of how international the Dutch are – they look outward, beyond their borders, Michiel says. And yet, Asia still represented a genuine blind spot.
His reasoning for going to China was direct: if you truly want to understand a culture, you have to live there. And what living there gave him was irreplaceable.
“What I learned about China still helps me today,” he says. “China is such a tremendous force in all aspects of our lives – from the economy to politics to social life.”
That knowledge shapes how you read a business situation, interpret a negotiation, or assess a market. It becomes part of how you think.
Teamwork learned under pressure
The CEIBS environment does not ease you into collaboration – it throws you in. From the earliest weeks, students are working across cultures and different communication styles and learning to build trust quickly. Michiel recalls that the process starts with something deceptively simple:
“The interpersonal relationship you have with somebody and with a team starts with giving others a place in a conversation.”
That might sound like basic courtesy. In practice, under deadline pressure and with genuinely different cultural assumptions in the room, it is a skill that takes real effort to develop. You begin to see that there are multiple valid paths to the same solution – and that your default approach is just one of them.
The investment that keeps paying
Michiel speaks directly and candidly about his CEIBS MBA: “CEIBS definitely was one of my top ten experiences – top five.” Not top business experiences. Top life experiences.
The best MBAs give you tools, frameworks, and perspectives that go with you into every room you ever walk into afterward. For Michiel Jonkman, that room is now the boardroom. But the habits of thinking, listening, and leading that CEIBS built in him? Those started in Shanghai.
