Alumni Profile: Cathy Liu
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Degree: Master of Business and Information Technology 2004 Current Position: Website Specialist Cathy Liu is a Master's graduate and qualified translator who has worked with some of the biggest names in Australian business. She recently returned to Melbourne from Shanghai, where she played a leading role in the Alumni Association of the University of Melbourne in China. Cathy has also turned her creative and entrepreneurial skills to setting up her own fashion business. |
My full name is Jing Liu, but everyone calls me Cathy. I work for Global Reviews, Australia’s biggest customer service research and consulting company. We provide services to major companies in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. I work in the web site benchmarking and consulting team.
My daily routine includes analysing data, creating workshop presentations for client managers, and making recommendations for clients to improve their online customer service, based on the results of the data analysis. Sometimes I meet clients with the client managers to help deliver the workshops. I also develop training manuals and help to train analysts to deliver their work. I’m the webmaster for our company and Project Manager for the implementation of the company intranet.
Since we have more than 60 clients among Australia’s top 100 companies, and we’re quite project driven, every day I’m assigned different projects for different industries. My work is full of variety. Being creative and innovative is always a priority in my work.
I’ve been in my current role for just over five months. Before that, I was based in Shanghai, China, where I worked as a Project Manager for Foster’s Shanghai Brewery, part of the Foster’s group. In that role, I led a strategic Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation across the whole operation. I was awarded Excellent Employee in 2006 due to the success of that project. When not on project, I worked as Senior Executive Assistant to the General Manager, setting up and improving a lot of business processes.
While I was still studying, I gained my professional translator’s credential (NAATI Level III) and did translation work for Greg Norman and Bob Shearer’s companies.
I did my first degree overseas, and came to Australia for my master’s degree. The knowledge I obtained from my degree doesn’t apply directly to my work; however, there are a couple of key aspects of postgraduate study that really helped me to develop my career. One is being able to apply knowledge to reality, an ability I developed by doing a lot of case studies. The other is team spirit, gained by working on group assignments.
Apart from my job, I’m busy managing and developing my own business, Melbourne Story, selling wedding gowns and evening dresses. The concept came from my own wedding six months ago. I found the wedding dresses in Melbourne were ridiculously expensive. I got my own wedding dress from Shanghai, and it looked gorgeous and everyone asked where I got it. After that, I thought: why not set up a wedding dress business myself, to offer beautiful but affordable dresses to more brides? I quickly put the idea into action, doing market research, looking for designs and looking for overseas partners. The business was set up in December 2006 and I have found a dressmaker and designer as my partner. I'm still looking for some retail dress stores to sell my formal dresses. I also designed and developed a web site for the business.
I’m also studying part-time towards a Project Management Professional Credential, doing some translation work for my church and looking for investment properties - my real hobby.
