I am Singaporean and grew up in Singapore. I went to the US for college and after graduation, began my career in investment banking as a corporate finance analyst for Salomon Smith Barney based in San Francisco. After getting my MBA from The Wharton School, I worked in consulting for a couple of years in New York before relocating back to Singapore and working in corporate finance roles again in investment banking and private equity. After starting a family and having travelled more than 100,000 miles within 18 months for business, I decided to find a role that would enable me to be a bit more rooted in terms of travel, which ended up being an in-house corporate finance senior manager role with a Temasek-linked power and utilities company called Sembcorp Industries that is listed on the SGX and a component of the local stock market index. I worked in Sembcorp for 12 years during which I had four children and rose through the ranks to become Group Treasurer, before joining Rio Tinto as Head of CCommercial Treasury in 2022.
In my current role as Head of Commercial Treasury for Rio Tinto, I am responsible for Rio Tinto’s treasury operations and treasury risk management including cash investments, cash management, foreign exchange and interest rate management, supply chain and trade financing and working capital solutions, bank guarantees, surety bonds and treasury systems. Our scope of responsibility is global but my team and I are based in Rio Tinto’s Singapore office.
I stumbled into my first corporate treasury role because the team was looking for someone with corporate finance experience. So I consider myself lucky to be in the world of corporate treasury as I haven’t looked back since.
I was heavily involved in a major corporate action in which Sembcorp funded its listed-subsidiary and after the listed subsidiary was recapitalized, then did a dividend-in-specie of the subsidiary’s listed shares to Sembcorp’s shareholders. It was very challenging with a lot of issues to be carefully considered. Looking back, the mental gymnastics I had to go through on technical aspects of the transaction as well as the people management challenges, were great for my personal growth and maturity as a treasurer.
Someone once told me: “your job is as big as you want it to be”. I remember going away feeling that I am master of my own destiny and that I always have a choice.
My team started a project to roll-out Rio Tinto’s standard treasury operating model to certain joint venture companies. Once on-boarded, our JV companies are able to benefit from Rio Tinto’s treasury systems, operational backbone as well as more efficient and standardized workflows. We are rather pleased at our first roll-out which has gone live since November and look forward to other roll-outs in 2025.
First: “Your job is as big as you want it to be”.
Second: I really like Rio Tinto’s core values of care, courage and curiosity because it’s so important to do our work with care and to have the courage and curiosity to ask questions or challenge the status quo. Living these core values helps us push ourselves and grow in our career, no matter which stage of our career we are in.
Third: Join ACT and meet as many treasury professionals as you can!
Problem solving and communication skills, in particular, the ability to clearly explain the treasury perspective to non-treasury people.
I’m at page 87 of “The World for Sale”.
Energetic, intense and flexible.