Interviewee Background

I spent a big part in the 80s and up to the mid-90s, with the same bank for twenty years and being the Chief Financial Officer. So, in that role, there is the helping the businesses understand their financial performance, their financial results, their financial planning. Subsequently, I was headhunted to join a real estate company as their CFO. It is a family-owned company that has a portfolio of properties. They are basically developers. They own a portfolio of real, top quality properties from hotels to condominiums to shopping malls, the whole range. I was with them for three and a half years when I got a call again that there is this start-up university that is looking for finance person, would I be interested. So, in the sense, in terms of my own journey in my career, it fitted in because when I started out, my wish was that, ultimately, I would like to end up working for a Singaporean entity either it is family, or a local company. So that kind of fitted in quite well and at that time now this is just before 2000 these were the days of the start-ups. Everybody was talking about starting up something. And the Internet world was just growing, so that was something interesting to me. A few things appealed to me one was the start-up, secondly was it is a university. Two, the other thing, is that it is something that impacts the next generation. So I say, Fantastic, it appeals to my own career goal. So, I responded and I met up with Janice [Janice Bellace] in the interview and I got a job as Director of Finance.