Taking a role at the regional office has given me ample opportunity to interact with colleagues from across the region. In the regional office alone, there are 24 nationalities represented! I recognize and enjoy the fresh perspectives of people from different cultures. The diversity enables us to be a more effective team. For example, the approach to problem solving can be quite different between cultures. By putting our heads together, we have better balanced considerations and often arrive at more effective solutions. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I had opportunities to visit our regional offices for meetings or conferences. The visits were great opportunities to lean from my colleagues. They gave me a front seat view of their processes, conduct of meetings, and even ways of communicating (including jumping from desk to desk announcing the month’s KPI achievements)! While I’m not athletic enough to go freerunning through my office, these exchanges have given me new ideas to try within my team.

One of the key things I consider when taking a job is the impact I make on society. This adds meaning to what I do and give me a sense of purpose. I have had the privilege to work on public safety systems in one of my past roles. I managed a large project of more than $30mn to deliver a new communications, command and control and despatch system for the fire and ambulance service in Singapore. 4 years of gruelling work resulted in a successful launch of one of the most advanced systems in the region. We provided intelligence from various data feeds, enabled the public to make calls for assistance through different channels, and enabled the service to dispatch appropriate resources to arrive in the shortest time possible. Years after I moved on from that project, I feel a sense of pride each time an emergency vehicle whizzes by and I see the system I delivered installed on board. I also had the opportunity to lead the technical implementation of an even larger system for public healthcare to provide secure and reliable IT operations for our nation’s healthcare system. My wife is a doctor and I was glad to be able to support her work in this way. Now in the insurance sector, I view my work has part of protecting the livelihood of our many customers across the region. By governing IT, I play a role in ensuring our customers can acquire the insurance products they require and get help when it is most needed.