Jack Song, a.k.a. Song Chuanjie, came to Stony Brook University's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) in 1999 in the last group, China V, of a special program initiated by Charles Wang. Known as AIMP - Advanced Information Management Program, it brought 100 of China's best and brightest up and coming IT and management professionals to the US for executive and information technology training. 

At the time Jack came he was the Director of the IT Department of the Agricultural Bank of China, Shandong. He is now the CIO, in charge of the 5th largest commercial supercomputer in all of China, and a provincial legislator on the side! Up and coming was putting it mildly! 
 

Selection for AIMP was something the Chinese government took very seriously. China had made the decision to enter the global market and to open its own markets. It knew it had to be as competitive as the multinational corporations. To be selected for AIMP, not only did these professionals have to be considered top notch in their own companies, they were rigorously tested by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

While here Jack and the members of China V took graduate courses in management and learned American culture. Most importantly, each week they spent a day in an American business seeing the operation in a real hands-on way. This was a perfect fit for their desire to learn and understand how IT was governed and aligned with business in the leading corporations in the leading country. They all still talk about how much they learned from Bank of New York and UPS. And for Jack, since he was in the same field, Citicorp and First National Security Bank were also of great value.

After returning to China Jack was in the Application Development Center of ABC for Core Banking Application Performance Engineering. In 2001, as Director, he lead a team that accomplished a milestone project: 'ABC Data Center Consolidation with Open System Platform'. The data center was ranked 150 in the top 500 systems worldwide. It established a breakthrough reference and disruptive advance in the banking industry. This project included the installation of a supercomputer and ABC Shandong ranks #5 of the top 50 supercomputer sites in China with an HP SuperDome 552MHz / Hyperplex 2xSD/64.

That was followed in 2002 by his becoming Director of the Project Management Office, Data Center Consolidation Pilot Project, at ABC Headquarters. That year Jack and his team established another breakthrough milestone in the ABC IT route map.

In 2003 Jack was promoted to Manager of the eBank Department of ABC Shandong where he was responsible for e-channel construction and 95599 call center operation management.

"It was AIMP at SBU that piloted me into executive IT management and a business management career," said Jack, "and I value AIMP and SBU for this." Since then, Jack has done his IT management jobs like a CEO, and he went on to further his education by getting his Executive MBA from the China European International Business School. CEIBS is considered #1 in Asia and its EMBA program is ranked #13 worldwide by Financial Times.

And with that Jack was made Director of the IT Department and CIO of ABC Shandong. He then became responsible for leading his bank in preparing its business-aligned IT infrastructure for January 1, 2007 - the day when China has promised to totally open its financial market.

Jack lives in Jinan, capital city of Shandong Province, most famous as the birthplace of Confucius, with his wife, Wangyan. They just became empty nesters. With no interest at all in IT, their son left this summer to begin college in Beijing, majoring in Germany - its language, history, culture, and economics. He will be attending Beijing University of Foreign Study, ranked as number one for foreign service in China. He wants to go into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after graduation though Jack thinks he should do graduate school in Germany first before making that career decision.

But work and family are only two sides to Jack. He is also a Shandong provincial legislator, standing member of CPPCC Shandong, similar to a New York State Senator. Another member of China V traveling to Shandong for business joked about being in the taxi and realizing the person being interviewed on the radio was Jack.

Jack is very proud of his accomplishments as a legislator. He said that about one-third of all of his proposals are approved, something that is considered quite rare. Among his many duties he is responsible for overseeing the provincial officials and court judges.

Talking about his time in New York, Jack called it one of the best experiences he ever had. While leaving his family was hard, for the first time in their lives the members of China V had the freedom to just be students without the competitive pressures they had in college and without the day to day pressure of their jobs.

The other members of China V all owed Jack a debt of gratitude. Having recently been in a serious car accident, Jack called himself "the invalid" and refused to be tied down by the constraints imposed by CA and CEAS. Jack was one of the ringleaders who changed the rules.

Denied their freedom to go wherever they wanted, Jack told the CA handler to take a walk - while he went out and rented a car, the first of many rented by the rest of China V. Then off they went on long weekends to see a new part of America. By the time Jack left, besides the Big Apple, he and his compatriots had visited Yellowstone National Park, Chicago, New Orleans for CA World, Disney World, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Boston, Montreal, Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Ottawa, not to mention traveling through the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee to visit the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville.

In August of 2006 at the first official China V reunion, held in Shanghai, Jack talked about the SUNY / Stony Brook quest to start a program in China. He offered to do whatever he could to help make it happen. "Stony Brook is well respected because of Yang and Wang," he said. "Unfortunately it is entering the market late but I would like to see it become well established in China. Stony Brook was important for me and all China V. I want it be important for more Chinese too."
 

Jack SONG
Agricultural Bank of China, Shandong
No 168 Jing Qi Road
Jinan, Shandong 250001 P. R. China

Blog: http://jacksong.blog.sohu.com (in Chinese)

schuanjie @ hotmail.com

by Ja Young, Alumni Editor, Shanghai Summer, 5 Sept 06

 Photo Gallery of Jack: http://www.aa2sbu.org/gallery/JackSong 

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