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Shawn Wang, Kogod ’94

The scholarship Shawn Wang was offered when he entered Kogod’s MBA program was just his first taste of success.

As CFO for Baidu.com, China’s dominant Internet search engine, Wang is a key player in the rise of a company that had the biggest opening day gain by a foreign company in NASDAQ history.

With a corner on about 70 percent of China’s search engine market, Baidu has plans to go international. “We will continue to position ourselves as a leader in China . . . I think e-commerce . . . will drive our business to the next level, the next dimension.”

If Wang sounds confident in his vision for Baidu, it’s with good reason. Before joining the enormously successful Internet start up, he was recruited for China’s Securities Regulatory Commission (SERC) to advise on the regulation of public offerings in China’s domestic capital market.

E-business was not Wang’s initial career plan, however. He first studied industrial engineering in China, and in 1992 headed to the United States to study for a master’s in education at West Virginia University.

“I thought what I could do was to maybe study education and come back and be a teacher” explained Wang. “But when I was studying education I took some business courses and quickly found out that was something I could really be good at.”

And good he is. In the three years that he has been at Baidu’s financial helm, Baidu has gone head-to-head with Google capturing twice the size of Google’s share of China’s search engine market.

His passion for his homeland, coupled with a belief that the search engine is the premier business model in the Internet industry, continue to feed a young company that is growing up fast in a more open Chinese economy.

When he recently visited AU and spoke to a receptive Kogod class, Wang took time to recount his fond memories of the school that helped set him on a fast track to success. “I’m extremely proud to see how AU has continued to carry on this educational focus, providing a tremendous advantage for its students.”  —David Ferraris