 My name is Sonia Proleke. I am a 2015 scholar who studied in Malaysia, and I currently work at AT Carney as a management consultant here in Sydney. Without the new Colombo Plan, I don't think I would have been able to go overseas as someone who is a first-generation Australian migrant and also someone from the inner west of Sydney. This has really broadened my horizons and given me the opportunity and opened up possibilities to go to different countries and work and study overseas. The new Colombo Plan scholarship definitely continues to shape my career to this day well after my actual exchange program. I work in a global consulting firm, and the fact that I am Asia-literate and I have worked and studied in the region really makes me highly valued both amongst colleagues and clients and allows me to better connect with our counterparts across the world. As a consultant, we are very strongly connected with the Indo-Pacific region, and so the fact that I've actually been in these countries actually gives me something personal to connect with our clients on. And that in itself is invaluable in a region which really relies on those personal connections to forge business relationships. At the end of the day, they are the up-and-coming economy. They are going to be the superpowers of the world, and Australia as a gateway to that is so well positioned to take advantage of the economic, of the social, of the cultural benefits that this will provide, and I just want to be a part of that.