Simple words as “Young female leader of new era” cannot fully describe this woman because she is an individual who engrained many different types of characteristics in herself.
She is the CEO of one of the largest companies of Mongolia, and celebrated mother. She is the head of leading company in national heavy industry and the face of international brand accessories. She is the leader of national mega-project, busy director, and hardworking housewife. She is kickboxer and meditator, mathematician and dancer. She is principle-oriented in business fields and fighter against unfairness. In other words, Munkhnasan Narmandakh possesses knowledges and feelings, experiences and intuitions, hardness and flexibility, bravery and beaty. She is a rare character among female leaders of Mongolian business fields. But, how was this character created?
On the other side of the globe, inside unfamiliar household.
Her childhood was not regular like others who had lollipops in their mouths, ribbons on their hair, thinking nothing else other than just having fun and playing. All of house duties fell upon her shoulders with younger sick sibling in the absence her mother who often went countryside areas for geological expedition works for many months. Her father was a mathematician and school director who greatly influenced her to thrive in her studies, attend in extracurricular classes of music and dance, and to stay exemplary student among her classmates. She lost her father at the of 14 and left with even greater responsibilities as the eldest child of the house facing with the choice that she had to become an adult while still being a child.
In the same year, when she was studying in English course at Mongolian Pioneer’s Palace, she had an opportunity to befriend Lisa Bradford who was teacher came to Mongolia through Red Cross Society, which was the beginning of a great changes in her life.
Munkhnasan became a dear friend of Mrs. Bradford who was struggling in the poor county, among unfamiliar people and foods and drinks she was not used to. When Munkhnasan expressed her wishes of visiting USA to Mrs. Bradford told her about INMEX, students’ exchange program and decided to help her. The program they chose costed 5000 USD. There was no one to receive her in USA, so Lisa decided to send her directly to her own home for stay.
At the time, her mother, Garamjav Ts, had just established Monpolymet company trying to decorate her company’s head office and 5000 USD financially sounded huge problem not just for a family, but even for a company. However, her mother decided to invest in her future and sold back all of her new office furniture to collect necessary money to send her away to school saying “Learn new things in new place my daughter”. For Munkhnasan, she had strong desire to learn English and have her sick younger sibling treated.
Trust laid upon her by her mother who was greatest example of patience, endurance, hard work, and persistence, was the main direction she pursued in her life.
Lisa’s parents were expecting to pick her own daughter up at the San Francisco airport, but instead they saw this strange teenage girl from Mongolia. Initially, they were hesitant to welcome her at their home, however, with the insistence of their daughter, they decided the let Munkhnasan stay at their home temporarily. Fortunately, things turned out to be great and she had already become a member of their family. When Lisa finally came home, Munkhnasan had already become close with her parents after long time of learning English with her father and cooking with her mother.
After three years, when she graduated from school and decided to go back to Mongolia, Lisa’s parents expressed their feeling with tears not wanting her to go back. Even Mrs. Garamjav who visited for her graduation was shocked and happy at the same time after seeing how much she had changed from three years ago.
Bullying was a common thing when she was studying in high school in USA. In order to become popular in her class, she used her knowledges in mathematics as her strongest side and helped her classmates in return asking them to help learining English more. In very short period of time, she managed to show successful grades in her school and brought 20 more students from Mongolia through the same INMEX program, which brought her the proposal on pursuing her further education for free. Many students who followed her steps to USA have all become precious and valuable professionals of Mongolia.
The year 1995 was when the destiny threw Munkhnasan N. to the other side of the globe landing her in foreigner’s home where she managed to bloom. Since then, she successfully graduated from the University of San Francisco majoring in economics and finance, worked in Central bank of Mongolia as economist, finished undergraduate school at George Washington university majoring in financial engineering, and started working in the central office of World Bank where she formed herself to become valuable and experienced manager and leader.
She always points out that the path she followed in her life was grealty influenced by her mother. Trust laid upon her by her mother who was greatest example of patience, endurance, hard work, and persistence, was the main direction she pursued in her life.
Munkhnasan’s mother described her as incredibly optimistic and has ability to fix any problem with a single smart word.
Foundation of sustainable fund was poured:
If Monpolymet company is not included in the history book of Mongolian mining, it would seem that several pages from the book have been ripped out. Business moto of Monpolymet that was established in 1992 and named as miner-rehabilitator ever since is environmental rehabilitation and eco-manufacturing. In its 30 long years of work in mining industry, Monpolymet managed to become exemplary company in the field, and spent over 10 million USD for creating forest and pasture lands, watering and flowering works and creating man-made artificial lake, and mostly restoring over 90 percent of the mining area, which greatly helped giving back the mother earth. With these years of hard works, Monpolymet received “Leading mining company on environmental rehabilitation works” awards many years in a row.
In 2015, Garamjav Ts. founder of Monpolymet, handed over the company to her daughter when the Monpolymet had already poured solid foundation of sustainable development. It was Munkhnasan’s turn to develop the company further up where it can compete at world level.
Running business in mining industry only was a risky game because of fluctuation in raw material prices and general economy ups and downs, therefore, the family business had to be diversified. Right at this moment, proactive policies were taking places to replace imported cement that supplied 80-90 percent of the local cement market with our own locally producent cement, which needed in development and construction of Mongolia. Then, Monpolymet decided to circulate limestone quarry at Senjit Khudag are at Urgun soum of Dornogobi province, which had been owned by the company in to economic use and build national complex cement plant.
The first feasibility study for the project was prepared when USD value was at around 1400MNT. Huge load works of market research, environmental assessment, and social responsibility reports required for this kind of large projects were successfully handled by Munkhnasan who was working at the World Bank.
Senjit Khudag limestone deposit has 200 years of approved limestone resource and can be raw material for producing good quality cement, however, it was a big challenge for her to find investment.
Initially, it was hard for her to find investment for the project that is planned to be implemented in sparsely populated Gobi region where there is no infrastructure and even harder for cement market with very low demand. Her request of investment was rejected more than once; however, she worked hard without giving up and eventually pulled in investors from both outside and inside financial organizations.
In May of 2014, she finally signed on contract of co-invested construction project of Moncement plant worth of 260 million USD at the central office of European Bank of Reconstruction and Development in London. Newly established “Moncement Building Materials” LLC was owned by Monpolymet at 80 percent and by EBRD at 20 percent. 75 percent of the financial funding came from both EBRD and Monpolymet and 25 percent came from Development bank of Mongolia. As of 2022, total 118 billion MNT was repaid to Development bank of Mongolia. In this amount, 27 billion MNT is included as the difference in exchange values USD against MNT accumulated since 2014.
After 3 years of hard works, she finally managed to find investors to carry out Moncement project proving herself that she is the manager who was prepared at international level.
Besides responsible mining, maintaining gender balance and rights in its business operation is one of the characteristics of Monpolymet group. This was one of the important factors of receiving financial fundings from international organizations.
Moncement project implemented sustainable development, visions, and goal of Monpolymet group and commissioned WHR plant that produces 5MW energy by recovering waste heat based on European dry-method technology for the first time in Mongolia. This technology is actually used in handful European countries. Moncement plant recycles 90 of its used water and consumes 4-5 times less water than wet-method cement manufacturing technology. European Bank of Reconstruction and Development awarded Moncement project with “Sustainable Development Award” Upon selecting among over 200 other international contestants in 2017 proving that the project successfully implement know-how of eco-production.
Even though construction works of the project were being implement during difficult times of country’s economy, the project managed to new era to the development of Urgun soum of Dornogobi province. During initial stages of the project, residents of Urgun soum worked in fluorspar mine of “Monrostsvetmet” combined company at Urgun soum. When this mine completely closed in 2012, residents started moving out of Urgun soum making the region empty and deserted.
In 2015, when the cement plant construction project completed and commissioned into permanent operation, local region revived and life started boiling. With the new plant, 500 new job positions opened up right away.
A complex cement plant of MonCement Building Materials LLC in Urgun Soum, Dundgovi province
The MonCement project was completed in three stages in 2016, and it currently covers about one-third of Mongolia’s total cement demand. Later, the US currency climbed considerably, and finance costs increased by 30%, but MonCement Building Materials LLC continued to deliver cement, one of the core industrial items, with quality and consistency. Because this is a long-term planned development for housing the country’s people and infrastructure, it should persist for many years. Furthermore, this project is a huge achievement since it both satisfies Mongolia’s objective of independence from the construction materials market and was completed by the private sector. As a consequence, a global standard product “Cement with Camel” was created.
MonCement Building Materials LLC has now established a miniature city-state in Urgun Soum. On the side that was previously unoccupied, large factories, power plants, trains, treatment plants, workers, communities, parks, and branch factories were erected one after the other. Many individuals who have lest the Soum have returned, and locals make up around 70% of all workers.
She leads over 1,000 young people across eight branch companies
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Munkhnasan is presently the chairwoman of the board of directors of Monpolymet Group, where she leads over 1,000 young people across eight different companies, including mining, natural restoration, building, and construction materials manufacturing. This large big family driven by the principles of regeneration, social responsibility, and know-how. Furthermore, hundreds of engineers and technicians who have been trained for more than 30 years are a source of tremendous pride for the organization. With the construction of the MonCement facility, a new generation of Mongolian professionals has emerged who have mastered modern technological technologies.
As the CEO of a group firm that has been in operation for 30 years, she decided that the biggest impediment to the development of the Mongolian business sector is legal uncertainty. “Transparency in the legal sector is very important in Mongolia’s current business environment,” she explained, “but inconsistencies between laws bring challenges.” For instant, the Law on Investment passed in 2013 states that international and local investors should be treated equally in terms of tax and non-tax policies, yet execution of this law remains insufficent. However, in most nations throughout the world, the government continues to effectively execute private sector collaboration by providing various policies to the private sector. “China recently declared that it has abolished poverty. “Big companies like Alibaba played a critical role in the main policy to alleviate poverty,” stated N. Munkhnasan. In other words, the private sector is making a significant contribution to the battle against poverty and economic recovery as a consequence of the government’s genuine support for the private sector, or the government is becoming an example of private sector collaboration. She highlighted that, even for our nation, successful adoption of this paradigm will result in speedier growth.
“The ultimate objective is not wealth. A person’s greatest accomplishment is to effect good change and have an impact on society.”
In addition to responsible mining, the Monpolymet Group ensures gender equality in operations. It’s also a key requirement for securing foreign funding. Gender relations are important to the company’s management in all initiatives that are executed. In a nutshell, it is a corporation that has demonstrated how important women can be in Mongolia’s economic growth.
She and her mother founded the “Eternal Sustainable Development” charity fund to benefit children, women, and society. Three kindergartens in Ger district were expanded to accommodate more than 200 new children, a new kindergarten for 150 children was opened, and a service center, primary school, and palace were built for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs in the Zaamar Soum, Dashinchilen Soum, and Buregkhangai Soum of Tuv Province. N. Munkhnasan works hard to transform the foundation into a charitable foundation that invests in future education and health. “Money is not the ultimate objective of a person. “The greatest success of a person is to make a constructive.
Wonder woman
The first thing that sticks out about N.Munkhnasan as a director is that she strives to maintain everything that is dependent on her in order. This is seen in all facets of their lives, including job, family, and leisure. Company, family, health, beauty, and mind will all be developed equally, without any being neglected. The 24 hours of the day are normally split quite precisely for this, and the process of delegation of power and duty is applied. For example, the organization encourages individuals to work as autonomously as possible, allowing them to take risks and fail. Branch company directors will “delegate” their managers. However, older children will be entrusted with part of the tasks of raising and educating their younger siblings at home.
If she goes into the kitchen, she can cook just as well as she is skilled at generating project feasibility assessments. She has devised plans and programs for self-development in work, life, health, fitness, societal contribution, role model for kids etc …
Another quality that suggests she is an interesting person is her habit of always evolving and refreshing herself. N.Munkhnasan’s morning begins with a brief moment of stretching, kneeling, and meditation to replenish energy for the day. She works hard to expend as little energy as possible at work. Come home in the evening and take care of her family and recharge herself. If she had a tough history at the workplace, she does not bring it at home.
There is a long list of activities that the director N.Munkhnasan undertakes in her free time. Kickboxing, fitness, crossfit, bodybuilding, aerobics, ballet, entertainment and Mongolian folk dance, yochin, harp, intellectual meditation, reading, petting animals, learning in the Harvard program for CEOs, etc. She developed as a rolemodel for women seeking to combine work and life, dubbed “How to Live Healthy and Smart.”
According to studies, the brain utilizes up to 60% of the energy stored in a person. However, 80 percent of the ideas in the human brain are negative and unhelpful. In other words, most people consume over half of the energy stored in their bodies through negative thoughts. N.Munkhnasan is fully aware of this, thus she concentrates her efforts solely to what is required. Possessing great relationships with everyone, including coworkers, family, friends, and lovers, as well as enjoying art and sports, reading books, and meditating, allows her to recharge herself like a “living battery” wherever she go.
Walking into her corporate office, you can see her balanced, structured, and healthy lifestyle. The mistress’s hand and heart are seen in the interior decorating and furniture. A coffee shop, a fitness facility, a gym, and a lounge where you may rest and meditate are all available. In essence, you receive the impression that you have entered the home of a diligent and hardworking lady, and the objects appear to greet you pleasantly on her behalf. According to the personnel, once inside the Monpolymet complex, it is tough to leave. From this, it is clear that the company considers a high value on their employee comfort.
N.Munkhnasan makes an effort to befriend her children. Of course, they have restrictions or rules at home as well. This, however, does not contradict their personality or dreams. A same idea applies at corporate office. If an employee makes a mistake, it is critical that they learn from it and do not make the same mistake again in the future. If it happens again, it is obvious what action will be taken, avoiding any misunderstandings.
Her spouse, a mathematician like her father, is a doctor and professor at the University of Mongolia, and the State Prize Winner mathematician Mr Altannar Ch. They are from the same 11th high school class and have studied physics and maths extensively. They both have demanding careers, yet they are very concerned about their children’s conduct and upbringing. “My husband is also a teacher at home, so the medal of my famous mother (or Order of Maternal Glory) is also that of my famous father,” director N.Munkhnasan says.
Эх сурвалж: Business.mn
