Swee Chen Goh, BSc

When global business leader Swee Chen Goh left her hometown of Batu Pahat, Malaysia, to study at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington in the early 1980s, she couldn’t have imagined the international career that would follow.

“Friends of my dad were already living here, and when they talked about New Zealand, I imagined a beautiful country,  with long stretches of shorelines and rugged mountain ranges—that was what attracted me initially,” she says. “Growing up in a family with humble means, access to free education was also a major draw.”

Originally drawn to Christchurch, her father insisted she enrol in Wellington, where family friends could look out for her. “It worked out well,” she says with a smile. “It’s where I met my husband.”

At school, Swee Chen had been fascinated by science, especially organic chemistry. “I enjoyed organic chemistry. It’s logical—I liked understanding the molecular architecture of hydrocarbon chains.  Choosing how atoms connect and predicting shapes requires logical reasoning—similar to solving 3D puzzles,” she says. But a teacher advised her against pursuing chemistry, steering her instead toward the fledgling field of information science. “Those were early days for technology —we were still coding in FORTRAN on punch cards [early computer programming cards with holes to store code]. Computing was not widely known at the time, but it appealed to the logical thinking side of me.”

That decision proved well-timed. Graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1983, she entered the workforce just as demand for IT professionals surged. “When you finish your degree, you go home, and your first goal is to find a job. Doing the information science degree was quite fortuitous, IT was just growing as a sector and demand for professionals was high.”

She began as an IT analyst in Malaysia before moving to Melbourne with IBM Australia. “IBM’s training was comprehensive. Graduates hired into the program were trained in areas such as how to read financial statements, deliver effective presentations and negotiate successfully. I had a good start to my career.”

Leadership opportunities soon followed. “I was 30 when I first began to lead a team with Procter and Gamble in Malaysia. I was hired into a general manager role in IT, running both the Malaysia and Singapore operations.”

In 2000, she studied for an Executive MBA at Chicago Booth University in Singapore, and three years later joined Shell.  “I spent more than two decades of my professional career in IT.   I wanted a change and asked to move into a profit and loss (P&L) role.  In my first P&L role, I set a goal to double profit in five years.  This was possible by always putting people at the centre—finding the right people and creating the right environment for them to flourish.” That business was Shell’s fuels and lubricants division across Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

She became the first female Chairman of Shell Companies in Singapore in 2014, leading the company until 2019. Today, her career spans global boardrooms. “A director’s role is different from a full-time executive, but what you learn in the boardroom is the importance of resilience and optimism for the future,” she says. She currently chairs the National Arts Council and the Nanyang Technological University Board of Trustees, and sits on the boards of Singapore Airlines, SP Group, JTC Corporation, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Woodside Energy, and GenZero.

Looking back, she points to a formative moment during her posting with Procter & Gamble in Japan. “In 1995, there was a major earthquake. I was five months pregnant and on my own in Kōbe. That was a pivotal moment for me—one, just how fragile life is; two, how fortunate I was to live through it; three, that there is always a silver lining. In crisis, you see the best and the worst of people, but if you can focus on the best, it gives you optimism for the future.”

Today, she often advises young graduates to stay curious and courageous. “Always be curious. Learning never stops. Don't be afraid to venture out of your comfort zone. Ask yourself what could be the worst-case scenario—if it’s something you can bear, go for it.”

She also encourages students to look beyond books and borders. “Go out and explore the world. Get to know how other cultures think, why they say things the way they do. And don’t just stick your nose in books or worse, be stuck to a computer screen. On campus, you learn how to influence, how to read body language, and how to debate. These are skills you learn and build in a physical environment.”

From Wellington’s lecture halls to senior leadership across Asia, Swee Chen Goh has carried those lessons with her. “It’s the ability to quantify logic, but also to apply values and purpose, that has guided my decisions. The two need to come together for the best outcomes.”

Watch Swee Chen’s presentation Trust in a Fractious World—The Future of Research & Innovation Collaborations at the Grand Challenges—A Southeast Asian Lens event series. The series, presented by the Wellington School of Business and Government and Southeast Asia Centre for Asia-Pacific Excellence, featured three keynote speech events from Te Herenga Waka alumna—Swee Chen Goh of Singapore, Dr Astrid Kartika of Indonesia, and Her Excellency Dr Serey Chea of Cambodia.