Harvard Business Review names WildChina “a leader in its field”

WildChina, a China adventure travel company, has been named a “leader in its field” by Harvard Business Review.“Forced to Shut-Down”, an article in the May 2011 edition of HBR, follows the story of Zhang Mei, Chinese travel entrepreneur and founder of WildChina, and what she “learned from the SARS crisis and its aftermath.”As told by Alison Beard, author of the Harvard Business Review article about WildChina:“The first defining moment of Zhang Mei’s career came in late 1999, when she quit her lucrative consulting job to launch a small travel company in her native China. In December, the Harvard MBA was wearing business suits to New York boardroom meetings; by July, she was in jeans, on the floor of her tiny Beijing office, untangling telephone wires.The second—and more important—turning point came nearly four years later, when the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak hit Asia, battering a travel industry still recovering from the 9/11 terrorist attacks and all but killing Zhang’s fledgling business. Nothing in her training had taught her how to handle the crisis. But she managed to keep the company going, and today WildChina is a leader in its field.Looking back, Zhang sees that her first big move turned her into an entrepreneur. But it was the SARS experience that taught her how to be a CEO.”Today, Zhang Mei is a board member at the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA).To read the full Harvard Business Review article or to find out more about Zhang Mei, visit the WildChina website.