What is your name, current location, and current occupation?
I am Alex Sun, currently based in Singapore. I am the Executive Director of CICC, a global investment bank.
What was your affiliation with MIT?
M.Arch and MSRED 2012
What was your thesis title?
“Ghost in the Shell”
What are you doing today?
As a senior banker, I am responsible for the bank’s cross-border real estate transactions and Southeast Asia investment banking business. As an adjunct professor in SUTD, I teach the course “Financial Disciplines for Architects”. I also play guitar in a small rock band in Singapore.
Do you think your career path has been unorthodox or nontraditional?
I guess I am not the most orthodox type. I was trained as an architect and ventured out into banking, private equity, investment, and fund management.
How did your time at MIT affect your career path?
I did an architecture and real estate degree concurrently and finished the five-year coursework in two and half years. The experience taught me that if people tell you something is impossible, most likely it is a path that is yet to be fully explored.
What are you excited about in your career field today?
Having the ability to achieve financial freedom. It is perhaps the foundation and one of the plausible paths towards true inner peace.
What is advice you would give to a new alum coming out of MIT?
Networking
What are you trying to learn right now?
Retail infrastructure C-REIT & Web3 metaverse
How can fellow alums reach you if they want to speak further?
portugalwin@gmail.com