When Giovanni Zangani (Full-Time MBA, Class of 2013) left Italy for Asia, he had no local network, no language advantage, and no clear roadmap for building a career in an unfamiliar market.
Drawn by the region's economic dynamism and eager to broaden his perspective beyond Europe, Giovanni made the bold decision to leave a consulting career at Accenture and pursue an MBA in Hong Kong.
It was one of the best places to understand the intersection between China and the rest of the world, he recalls, noting that the city provided an unparalleled East meets West perspective.
It was a destination that offered the rigor of top-tier Western academic standards within an immersive Asian context. At the time, Giovanni didn't know this calculated geographic shift would eventually lead him to Vietnam, where he would put down roots, found Maestro Equity Partners, and build a premier private equity career in Southeast Asia.
Learning to Turn Difference into Value
Breaking into private equity requires exceptional technical competence, and Giovanni credits the program with establishing his core financial foundation. But beyond the rigors of corporate finance, he found that the most profound lessons came from the people sitting next to him.
The MBA classroom acted as a psychological safety zone—a rare professional environment where students could seamlessly engage with diverse cultures, ask naive questions, and debate sensitive dynamics.
My classmates gave me a practical education in culture that no textbook could have provided, Giovanni says, joking that he even had to accept that not everyone in the world believes Italian food is the best food in the world.
More importantly, this exposure reframed how he viewed his own background in a competitive global labor market. Instead of seeing his non-local status as a disadvantage, he learned to leverage it.
If I imagine myself as a product, that's like putting myself on a supermarket shelf and trying to compete with everyone else on the same criteria, Giovanni explains. A different approach would be to understand what is distinctive about being Italian, about my culture, my experiences and my values, and put myself in the specialty store instead.
In the specialty store, differences are not liabilities to overcome but strengths that create value.
From Cultural Agility to Investment Success
The HKUST MBA did more than broaden Giovanni's perspective. It also opened the door to his first opportunity in private equity through an internship in Vietnam, a country he had first encountered during an MBA study trip with classmates. Today, as he navigates the complexities of Southeast Asia’s fast-growing frontier economies, he relies heavily on the cultural agility honed in Hong Kong.
Building trust with local founders across different cultures is arguably the most difficult part of his job.
The MBA didn't teach me a formula for operating in emerging markets, Giovanni notes. What it gave me was curiosity, cultural adaptability and the awareness that assumptions that work in one market may not work in another.
When you spend your entire life in one culture, it is easy to mistake your own worldview for objective reality. For Giovanni, the ability to step into a founder's shoes and find common ground has been the critical differentiator in successfully sourcing investments and closing deals in Vietnam.
Entrepreneurship Starts Before You Found a Company
You might assume Giovanni’s entrepreneurial journey began the day he founded Maestro Equity Partners. He sees it differently. Working alongside a successful Central Asian investor early in his private equity career, he underwent a fundamental shift from a managerial mindset to an owner’s mindset.
You don't become an entrepreneur the day you incorporate a company, he asserts. You start becoming one when you take ownership of outcomes, even as an employee, and stop looking outside yourself for circumstances or people to blame.
For Giovanni, entrepreneurship begins with accountability. Long before founding a business, it means taking responsibility for your development, decisions, and results. That conviction has only strengthened in the age of AI. While technology is making information and ideas increasingly accessible, he believes leadership will depend less on generating answers and more on exercising judgment and driving execution.
"AI can give you increasingly sophisticated answers, but it cannot decide what is worth pursuing on your behalf," he says. Leaders must now, more than ever, understand their core values and their central "why."
For prospective MBA candidates looking to follow in his footsteps and pivot industries, Giovanni offers a refreshing, counter-intuitive piece of advice. In a corporate culture obsessed with networking, he suggests a different approach:
Focus first on becoming someone worth meeting.
With LinkedIn and digital platforms making it easier than ever to reach the right people, access alone is no longer a real advantage. What matters is what you bring to the table. For Giovanni, entrepreneurship begins with taking full responsibility for that preparation — going beyond the classroom to build real financial fluency, making strategic sideways moves when they create a stronger path forward, and developing the discipline to offer value that is difficult to refuse.
The real question is: once that person meets you, do you have enough to offer for them to want to continue the relationship? Your preparation is ultimately your responsibility, he advises.
Looking back, pursuing an MBA was Giovanni’s first true act of entrepreneurship. Leaving a secure career to bet entirely on his own potential taught him the ultimate lesson: the most profound pivot an MBA offers isn't a new industry or geography, it’s the courage to take absolute ownership of your future.