FinTech Magazine - November 2021 | Page 18

TRAILBLAZER
higher education degree courses - it has to be said , without much success . Ma today claims he was rejected from Harvard Business School an impressive ten times .
During this time , Ma met his wife - Zhang Ying , a teacher at the school they both worked at . Later , they had three children . She once said of him , "[ He ] is not a handsome man , but I fell for him because he can do a lot of things handsome men cannot do .”
Zhang was right . Knockbacks did not deter Ma , and upon leaving academia , he faced numerous difficulties in the commercial market and found himself rejected from numerous jobs - one of which was a position at KFC .
" I went for a job with the police and they said , ' you ' re no good ," Ma told one interviewer of that time . " I even went to KFC when it came to my city . Twenty-four
18 November 2021