Sands China Ltd. celebrated its first group of team members to graduate from the innovative Sands China International Strategic Leadership Programme for Integrated Resorts with a Nov. 17 ceremony at Sands Cotai Central.

Aimed at developing leaders in integrated resort management, the first-of-its-kind Sands China International Strategic Leadership Programme for Integrated Resorts sent its initial group of local management team members around the world to receive leadership development from three prestigious universities on three continents over the course of five months, taking advantage of the unique areas of industry expertise of each educational institution – the Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics in Lisbon, Portugal; Cornell School of Hotel Administration in Ithaca, New York, USA; and the University of St. Joseph in Macao.

“We are very proud of these team members for being the first to successfully finish this pioneering professional development initiative from our company,” said Dr. Wilfred Wong (main picture), president of Sands China Ltd. “Investing in our team members and in local Macao talent remains a top priority for Sands China, and we are pleased to work with these three distinguished institutions of higher learning to provide a trailblazing programme of leadership development for our team members. We congratulate them all on their success.”

Offering international horizons for 25 potential future leaders, the Sands China International Strategic Leadership Programme for Integrated Resorts includes a business challenge — a practical component of the coursework for which participants are asked to analyse a specific, real-world business challenge faced by the company and develop a set of recommendations to deal with it. The task culminated with a presentation of the participants’ ideas to Sands China senior executives before the graduation ceremony.

The customised programme is the latest initiative of the Sands China Academy, and was specially designed in conjunction with Católica Lisbon, Cornell University and the University of St. Joseph in order to develop local leaders in integrated resort management.