In the business of building a socially just world
When Alexander Cheng enrolled in the UTS Bachelor of Business, he was looking for a path towards financial security. What he got was a business degree, and a university, that taught him to think beyond the traditional boundaries of the business profession.
“When I signed up for the business degree at UTS, I was thinking about how I could learn the tools of the trade to build some sort of economic mobility for myself,” says Alex, who was recently announced as a recipient of the prestigious Schwarzman Scholars graduate leadership program.
“I was also thinking about how I could start my own thing and use the university as a bit of an exploratory space to look at all my different interests."
Alexander Cheng
Bachelor of Business
“It felt like a really nice sandbox to test different things, try new ideas and do it with people who were along on the journey with me.”
From economic mobility to social impact
That journey started almost as soon as Alex set foot in the UTS Business School. He immersed himself in course curriculum that drew connections between business and social impact.
His subjects encouraged him to think about the role of business in society, as well as the ethical and sustainability issues linked to contemporary business practice. Internships with companies like Deloitte, Qantas and CBA taught him to deploy his skills in real-world settings.
Already curious about social entrepreneurship, Alex found his focus starting to shift away from pursuing a traditional business pathway and towards a more expansive view of what business could enable. In his second year, he launched the UTS chapter of Enactus, a network of social entrepreneurship clubs. The club welcomes students with an interest in building small-scale social enterprises across a range of different impact areas.
At the same time, Alex joined the UTS Hatchery (now UTS Startups) program, a business incubation initiative that equipped students with entrepreneurship skills. The crossover between Enactus and Hatchery connected him and his peers with an ecosystem of inspirational thinkers who were working both with and beyond the social impact space.
“Enactus was a really great introduction to see what we could do at UTS and explore the things we could do personally to drive more impact on campus,” he says.
“By contrast, Hatchery showed us how we could solve a problem with business being one of the levers we could use.”
Midway through his studies, Alex joined the UTS Case Team, a global program that sees business students travel the world to solve business problems posed by industry. Travelling to Norway and London helped him start thinking about business as a global proposition, a discovery that transformed how he thought about his own future career.
“I really wanted to work at the frontier of social impact,” he says.
“I was increasingly realising that I needed and wanted to build a much more global outlook on how we could approach social impact here in Australia, and possibly globally as well.”
Local focus, global lens
Since graduating from UTS, Alex has built a career that combines his foundational business management skills with his entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to diversity and social impact.
He’s worked in everything from management consulting to screen media, led Australia’s largest professional LGBTQ+ mentoring program, and is currently a Board Observer at the Sydney Theatre Company where he supports the organisation’s artistic and civic mission.
Those interests connected him to a likeminded group of friends and professionals who found themselves inspired by the various social rights movements that swept the globe during COVID-19.
“We reflected on what we could do better in Australia to utilise the energy of these global movements and create opportunities to unlock the intercultural capital that already exists here,” he says.
“I think a lot of us saw a need to push for greater inclusivity in Australia’s senior business leadership, and so we started an organisation to do it.”
That organisation was Careers in Colour, which provides career and workplace transformation for culturally and linguistically diverse professionals, creating a dedicated space for participants to build community and advocate for more inclusive workplaces.
At around the same time, Alex got involved with the Sydney chapter of the Global Shapers movement, which champions young people to lead community-based projects in areas such as civic engagement, inclusion and climate solutions that respond to local, regional and global challenges.
“These two initiatives were about collaborating across different disciplines and across different generations as a way to create the change we’re seeking in the world,” he says.
“It’s really awesome to think locally but then also to have a really global lens.”
Where business meets creativity
Now, Alex is set to turn ideas into action with his upcoming Schwarzman Scholarship. The Schwarzman Scholars scheme is a highly selective graduate leadership program that fosters cultural change and collaboration across the globe.
Alex was one of just 150 people selected from 5,800 applications from countries around the world. He and his fellow scholars will complete a one-year, fully funded Master of Global Affairs at Tsinghua University in China, beginning later this year.
There, Alex says, he wants to observe how one of the world’s largest countries grapples with issues like social uplift and innovation and to bring what he learns back to Australia. He’s also excited about surrounding himself with other Schwarzman Scholars who are on their own leadership, innovation and social impact journeys.
To this process, courtesy of his time at UTS, Alex will bring a business skillset that’s unusually grounded in social impact.
“It’s business, but it’s also culture, it’s technology, it’s creativity, it’s design, it’s all those things that come together to play a part in building the world you want to see,” he says.
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