Former Deputy High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives
22nd September 2015 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Teaming up to transform the world with Chevening
The application window opens this week for the Chevening Rolls-Royce Science and Innovation Leadership Fellowship Program (CRISP).
The programme aims to build collaborations between the UK and Sri Lanka in business, science and innovation. It connects leading Sri Lankans with the best British academicians and practitioners. The 11 week programme at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School is an opportunity to exchange ideas, refresh skills, and build networks so that participants return to Sri Lanka filled with energy and ideas to tackle the challenges that we all face in our respective countries.
In this blog, Shehani Gomes, one of Sri Lanka’s first two recipients of a Chevening CRISP award, talks about her experience at Oxford last year.
The CRISP Fellowship is the ideal platform for curious minds to engage in diverse, socially and economically stimulating conversations with like-minded professionals.
The first few weeks were all about settling in – acclimatizing to the picture-post-card-like surroundings of Oxford and meeting the people who were to become my virtual family overseas. I attended at least five welcome dinner parties – the warmth, the enthusiasm to receive us CRISP Scholars was tangible and appreciated. The dinners were painstakingly thought through with many South Asian dishes to accommodate our spicy palates!
There really were no students and teachers at Saïd Business School. Many of the speakers were near-celebrities in the academic world. In spite of this, the delivery of knowledge was almost casual. No question seemed silly, irrelevant or irreverent – just opportunities to extend the discussion meaningfully into the South Asian Context or migrate to the US momentarily!
The fellowship was not all indoors. We went to Cambridge, Avebury, the Rolls Royce Headquarters in Derby and even Europe. In fact sometimes I was grateful for a quiet day in the classroom! Networking eventually became a natural thing even for the more awkward of us – we had growing confidence that these conversations were contributing to the total sum of our experience in Oxford. Places we visited were packed with history and amusement. But they also freed our work-stressed minds to think. To think about what we were good at. What we enjoyed and what we prioritised professionally and personally. By the end of the fellowship, my under-eye-dark-circle remover had shifted from the daily pouch to a far-away drawer. It wasn’t a beauty staple anymore.
My friends, batch mates and flat mates were core to my CRISP experience. I was humbled to be amongst
a group so learned, so accomplished, yet so avid to learn and share at the same time. While we were of varying ages no one remembered. No one cared. Because our energy levels were in synch and ready to expand the horizons of the fellowship into West End theatre and weekend adventures in Cotswold.
The farewell dinner brought things full circle – what we’d gained, what we’d become. Even the sessions we couldn’t connect with made sense in the end. The experience will stay with us: thought-provoking and memorable, making an extraordinary case for innovation through teamwork, technology and transformational leadership. We refused to give in to teary goodbyes. We kept up energy levels and fervently planned to meet in India. Soon.
Chevening is the UK’s flagship scholarship programme for outstanding individuals with the potential to become future leaders in their field. The application window for both Chevening and CRISP is now open – for more details visit www.chevening.org
See also