Nearer the Sky: Service

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Service

Of the school’s four values, service may be listed last, but it is by no means least.

The girls of SCGS see service in action every day. Dedicated teachers demonstrate what it means to serve as they go about their tasks of educating their young charges. As a result, the girls enter into the wider world imbued with the knowledge that their purpose in life goes beyond mere self-interest.

They feel-and-know-in- their-very-bones that they have an obligation to serve causes much greater than themselves.

This is amply demonstrated by the people profiled in this chapter. The trio of Tan Hoon Siang, John Tan and Vicky Yap exemplify service to the school and to the wider community. The three of

Yong Ying-I, who is the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Communications and Information, has spent her entire career in the Administrative Service, working to better the lives of people in Singapore. During the course of her career, she has been a Permanent Secretary in a number of government ministries where she worked on policies that have touched the lives of many.

Two old girls have played a key role in making Singapore a successful global financial centre.

Elizabeth Sam was a former central banker who subsequently became Chairman of Simex and then the first female director of

a major local bank. Another central banker, Yeo Lian Sim, fought off an attack on the Singapore dollar in her position in Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, before going on to head regulations and risk management at the Singapore Exchange.

When we talk about service, doctors tend to be overrepresented, but for good, obvious, reasons. Mary Rauff is a venerable obstetrician and gynaecologist who has delivered thousands of babies over a career that spans more than four decades. Vijaya Esuvaranathan’s invaluable work as an anesthesiologist has saved countless lives by enabling surgeons to perform complicated surgeries safely. The nine doctors who are working with or who are associated with the National Cancer Centre Singapore are

helping to fight cancer through their clinical and research work.

The service performed by old girls is not restricted to Singapore.

Merlene Toh-Emerson has been active in the United Kingdom, serving the disadvantaged Asian community in her adopted homeland. For her efforts, she was given the award of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Indian poet, playwright and essayist Ravindranath Tagore wrote: “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

The people in this chapter, through their lives, work and acts of service, illustrate the timeless truth of Tagore’s words.

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them represent three generations of service to SCGS, thanks to their position on the Board of the school. At the same time, in their own ways, they have also made important contributions to society as well.

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Image credit to SCGS

Tan Jiew Hoe & Vicky Yap A Family Tradition of Service

To Vicky Yap (SCGS: 1974 - 1983), he was simply her doting grandfather, so she was surprised when she saw him in school at a National Day celebration.

“What is Gong Gong doing in school?” she wondered, “and why is he giving away prizes?”

Vicky, who was in primary school at the time, had no idea that her grandfather, Tan Hoon Siang, was the Chairman of the Board of SCGS. “My mother had never mentioned it and I then realised, oh dear, that I had better behave in school!” recalls Vicky.

Image credit to SCGS

of the school was Evan Wong, the first Asian Chartered Accountant practising in Singapore. His son Cecil subsequently became the Chairman of SCGS in 1988.

Cecil’s son David joined the Board later. Both have since retired from the Board.)

While it is not known why Tan Hoon Siang joined the Board, John believes it is possible that Dr Lim Boon Keng, one of the

founders of SCGS and a Board member, might have played a part. Lim Boon Keng had encouraged Hoon Siang’s father, Tan Chay Yan, to go into rubber, which the latter did - setting up Malaya’s first commercial rubber plantation and becoming the first man in the world to make commercial sheet rubber.

After Hoon Siang stepped down, there was a short break before his son joined. John was approached by then-Principal Rosalind Heng who said to him: “Your father was a chairman (of SCGS) for so many years. Would you like to join and continue the heritage?”

John said yes, and has not looked back since. As a plant conservationist, John’s contribution to SCGS includes planning, designing and sponsoring the Peranakan Garden in the courtyard. The garden features plants used by the Straits Chinese for culinary or medicinal purposes, or for practical purposes such as a dye or an air freshener. The plants include nutmeg, pepper, chili, different gingers like lengkuas, curry leaf, aloe vera and more.

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Tan Hoon Siang, a lawyer and a great grandson of Tan Tock Seng, became Chairman of the Board from 1951 to 1984. In 1987, his son, John Tan Jiew Hoe, joined the Board and thirty years on, continues to serve to this day. In 2017, Vicky joined her uncle on the Board and is now the Vice Chairman. (This is not the first time that three generations from a family have served on the SCGS Board. One of the early directors

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John’s contribution and service goes well beyond the school garden. As a Board member of Gardens by the Bay, one of his most notable projects is the Secret Garden at Gardens by the Bay, which was opened in 2017.

Located at the foot of the waterfall at the Cloud Forest, the Secret Garden uses limestone and forest plants as its setting. The project took two years to complete with the first year spent sourcing for materials. The results of the search include over 1,800kg of limestone.

(While the limestone is real, you might be interested to learn that the “stalactites” in the Secret Garden, are for safety reasons, made of fibreglass).

As a patron of botanical causes, he sponsors expeditions and books about plants. With his help, at least 500 new species have been discovered by botanists. His dedication is remarkable. Together with Dr Ruth Kiew of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, he has made 80 field trips into the Malaysian jungles which yielded 12 new species and material for a book — Begonias of the Malay Peninsula.

He has contributed a collection of plants belonging to the ginger family to the Singapore Botanic

Image credit to Gardens by the Bay

Gardens, made contributions towards the Tan Hoon Siang Mist House and provided over 1,300 species of plants to the Botanic Gardens for research and botanical works. To thank him for his support, he has had a stick insect, a beetle, a lantern fly and more than 15 plants named after him, including a hybrid of the Corpse Flower.

John’s interest in plants began when he was young. The house he grew up in had a 160,000 sq ft garden and he spent his free time

helping the gardener, as his father grew orchids. Indeed, Hoon Siang cultivated the Vanda Tan Chay Yan which in 1954 became the first orchid hybrid from Malaya to win the First Class Certificate at the Chelsea Flower Show. That started the orchid craze in Malaya and birth of the orchid industry.

John is proud of the fact that he has contributed to what he calls the “plant revolution” in Singapore - getting people interested in plants and nature, and bringing people of different races, religions

While John joined the Board because his father had been closely associated with it, Vicky joined because her boss first approached her about it.

as apart from her law practice, she was on the Probate Practice Committee of the Law Society of Singapore and also serving as a deputy subject coordinator and facilitator/teacher (Part B Course) with the Singapore Institute of Legal Education.

Given her interest in education and the family connection, Her boss and fellow partner was however, Vicky felt she could Kwa Kim Li at the firm of Lee not refuse. Her links to SCGS run & Lee. Kim Li, also a kim gek, broad and deep. Her mother had been on the Board but was was from SCGS, as were Vicky’s retiring. Vicky was not keen initially three sisters. Vicky’s aunts and her

cousins were old girls and her nieces continue to pass through the school’s portals.

Vicky is no stranger to being of service to the SCGS community either. For some 15 years, she had been a committee member of the SCGS Alumni so she already had a good idea of what was involved in serving and supporting the school – “A lot!” - but in the end, “I felt that I needed to continue the line of service begun by my grandfather.”

As a Board member, Vicky believes very much in the school’s continued drive for academic excellence, balanced by its embrace of a secular, holistic education.

“We have always had this ‘thing’ about our SC education being holistic. I left school imbued with the sense that we would conduct ourselves with integrity and kindness and I hope that our motto of sincerity, courage, generosity and service inspires all past, present and future kim geks”.

Courtesy of SCGS

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and walks of life together through a shared love for gardening (he is also the President of the Singapore Gardening Society).

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Elizabeth Sam Banker and Builder

Elizabeth Sam (SCGS: 1946 - 1955) is a major figure in the history of Singapore’s financial sector. She helped develop the Asian dollar market in Singapore, and her resume includes being Chief Manager of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Chairman of the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (two terms), and the first woman to be appointed to the main board of the Oversea-Chinese Banking Coroporation (OCBC). She was the Her World Woman of the Year in 1997 and was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame in 2014, an honour given out by the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations.

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Source: The Straits Time © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Reprinted with permission

After leaving SCGS, Elizabeth Sam (née Wee Kim Choo) did her pre-university years at Anglo Chinese School and then joined the University of Malaya, graduating with a degree in economics in 1962.

“Economics was the most practical study,” she recalls. “I thought it would give you a good start in your working life.”

The Administrative Service was, however, and she was one of three women to enter the service directly that year, she says. She joined the Ministry of Finance and worked in the Economic Development Division, and also looked after the financial sector.

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Courtesy of Elizabeth Sam

Soon after she joined the public service, Singapore parted ways with Malaysia and the country had to stand on its own. One of the nation’s key imperatives was growing the economy in any sector that had potential.

Right from the beginning, financial services was seen as an economic activity that could promote the growth in Singapore, Elizabeth notes.

“It was directly relevant to Singapore, we had a relatively bettereducated workforce, good communications, a good location and our people were from an entrepôt trading background.”

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While many female graduates end up in teaching, she wanted to do something different so she applied for a number of positions elsewhere. “I applied to banks and big organisations, including the Administrative Service. Most big companies were not interested in employing women at the time.”

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One of the key steps in developing the financial services sector in Singapore was the setting up of the Asian dollar market, which Elizabeth was involved in. “The Asian dollar market was probably the starting point of Singapore going very seriously into financial services,” she says.

In an effort to grow the financial sector, the Ministry of Finance gave the go-ahead for banks to set up an Asian Currency Unit to handle non-Singapore dollar deposits in the late 1960s. This was a separate bookkeeping unit to prevent the funds from disrupting Singapore’s domestic monetary system.

between the time markets closed in the United States, and the time they opened in Europe.

To promote the Asian dollar market, the government gave tax concessions, abolished the withholding tax on interest paid on Asian dollar deposits, and exempted banks from statutory liquidity and reserve requirements for those deposits.

capacity, continued to help develop the Asian dollar market as well as Singapore’s foreign exchange market.

She left the MAS in 1981 to join an investment holding company based in the United Kingdom, where she was the director in charge of the Asia Pacific operations. In 1988, she left to join OCBC Bank and less than a decade later, was promoted While these factors were to Deputy President. She also important, it was also necessary to became the first woman to be get banks to sign up for this, and appointed to the bank’s Board of that task fell upon Elizabeth and Directors. She retired from OCBC her team. in 2000.

“When you start a new market, everybody is skeptical,” she recalls. “But the good thing is The model for the Asian dollar that we started from a zero base. market was the Eurodollar market, You can’t get minus from zero.” which came into being after the Today, the total assets of the Asian Second World War. Eurodollars Currency Unit hovers at around are deposits in (mainly) US dollars US$1.3 trillion. that are held in banks outside the US. These deposits are not When the Monetary Authority of subject to US banking laws so Singapore was set up in the early institutions can pay higher interest 70s, Elizabeth (who had worked rates. Singapore’s advantage, on the legislation to set up the among other things, was that the MAS), together with others from Asian dollar market could take the Finance Ministry, joined advantage of the time difference the central bank and in that

Although she left the public sector in 1981, Elizabeth continued to play an important in Singapore’s financial services industry. She was Chairperson of the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (Simex) from 1987 to 1990, and again from 1993 to 1996. During her tenure at Simex, one of the precursor companies of the current Singapore Exchange, she helmed the organisation at two significant moments in the history of Singapore’s financial services industry: Black Monday in 1987 and the collapse of Barings in 1995.

Courtesy of Elizabeth Sam

Acknowledging her role in developing Simex, Ravi Menon, the managing director of MAS noted in a speech marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of Simex that Elizabeth “oversaw the expansion of SIMEX into the financial options and commodities markets.” She also led Simex during “tumultuous times, upholding the integrity of the market during the 1987 Black Monday and the 1995 Barings crises.”

‘Black Monday’ is the name given to October 19, 1987 when stocks markets around the world crashed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 22.6 percent that day while The Straits Times Index plunged 12 percent, the biggest one-day drop in local history.

While Black Monday was a global event in which Singapore was swept along, the Barings debacle was a crisis made in Singapore and it involved Simex.

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Nick Leeson, then a 28-yearold employee of Britain’s oldest merchant bank, made unauthorised trades on Simex on behalf of Barings. Within Barings, he was seen as a genius in derivatives trading because on paper, his trades were wildly profitable. However, this was only because he concealed all his losses in a secret account.

The use of this account began in 1992 and continued until January 1995 when Baring’s losses hit $2.2 billion. Leeson fled Singapore on February 23, 1995 as serious questions were raised by auditors in Barings. The bank was declared insolvent a few days later as the full extent of the losses were exposed. Leeson eventually was arrested and served four years in prison in Singapore.

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Courtesy of Elizabeth Sam

The Barings crisis was caused by a rogue trader who hid his massive losses in a secret account, which the management of the bank failed to detect. A report commissioned by Singapore’s

However, that this happened on Simex put the spotlight on the exchange’s own regulatory and risk management procedures and Elizabeth’s job as Chairman was to reassure the world that Simex, and by implication, Singapore, was still reliable.

“I remember leading a delegation to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, our partner exchange, to reassure them that Singapore was okay — that we had dealt with the situation, that we had learned lessons — and tried to minimise the damage.”

After retiring from corporate life, Elizabeth took on some board directorships and did some advisory work. Today, she is focused on enjoying life. “While I’m still able to, I want to travel as much as I can.”

says that was one reason why she did not go into teaching herself, because “unless you can be as good as they are, you should never try and attempt to be a teacher.”

The nation owes a debt to She travels frequently to London, Elizabeth for her trailblazing where her son Sherman, an artist, efforts in building Singapore’s is based. While she is there, she financial services industry by meets friends and attends the building the Asian dollar market theatre and the opera, the latter and being a steadying hand being something she picked up through Black Monday and after leaving the corporate world. the Baring crises. Her many achievements in her banking She has also taken up ballroom career attest to her intelligence, dancing seriously. In May 2017, acumen and tenacity and she is together with her dance instructor, someone that SCGS, and indeed, she came in second in the waltz Singapore, can be proud of. and tango, and third in the foxtrot in her age group at the 92nd annual Blackpool Dance Festival in England.

Elizabeth says she enjoyed her Simex immediately began to time in SCGS very much. “In my tighten its controls and improve its time in SCGS, we had wonderful procedures to prevent something teachers; all our teachers were similar from recurring. fantastically good.” In fact, she

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Finance Ministry accused Barings of “institutional incompetence” and a “total failure of internal controls”. Bank of England reported similarly to problems of control and management failings within Barings.

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Mary Rauff

Labouring in Service of the Nation

Courtesy of Julie Kwong-Lee

Given Singapore’s falling birthrate, the work of Mary Rauff (née Ting) has been nothing if not vital to the nation’s well-being. Mary (SCGS: 1955 - 1963) has been delivering babies into the arms of exhausted but delighted mothers since the mid-1970s. At one point, she was delivering 300 babies a year so it is safe to say that she has delivered thousands of babies over the course of her four-and-a-half decades long career.

In addition to her work at the National University Hospital (NUH) and National University of Singapore (NUS), she also sees her own patients in her practice at Mt Elizabeth Medical Centre.

student, he had been offered a government scholarship to study either medicine or science. He rejected medicine at the time and subsequently regretted that decision. As a result, he undoubtedly transferred some of his frustrated ambitions onto Mary.

Despite being more interested in veterinary science initially, Mary settled into her studies at the medical school of the University of Singapore. After completing her basic medical degree, she

“I had a very enjoyable time: the patients are healthy, it’s a happy event, and the patients don’t stay forever. That’s when I decided I’ll probably do O&G.” In 1977, She joined the University of Singapore which was then headed by S.S. Ratnam and stayed at the university until 1990. She left the university to focus on her

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Although she is now a prominent name in Singapore’s O&G scene, medicine was not actually her first choice. “I was very keen to do veterinary science,” she recalls.

After her A-Levels, there were Colombo Plan Scholarships for veterinary science available but her father put his foot down.

“Nothing doing, you go and do medicine,” he told her. As a

subsequently chose to specialise in O&G after doing her housemanship at Kandang Kerbau (KK) Hospital.

Courtesy of Suzan Goh

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Now 70, the Senior Consultant at the National University Hospital does less obstetrics work though she still occasionally finds herself in the delivery room. She balances her clinical hours with teaching at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G). There, she teaches both undergraduates and post-graduates.

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private practice for about 10 years before rejoining in 2001.

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Over her long career as an obstetrician, she has seen a wide variety of cases. One of her more memorable cases was of an abdominal pregnancy that was successfully carried to term.

Abdominal pregnancies occur when the foetus grows in the abdominal cavity rather than in the uterus. These pregnancies are rare and very few of them carry to term. There is a high foetal and maternal mortality rate associated with them. As such, if discovered early, the pregnancy is terminated to decrease the maternal morbidity and mortality associated with a term abdominal pregnancy. If they are carried to term, it is usually because they were not detected as abdominal pregnancies until very late.

Mary’s case occurred when she was working in the University unit in KK Hospital. She was referred a patient who was at about 12 weeks of gestation. The

ultrasound machine at KK Hospital was not very advanced at the time but it did show that something was unusual. “With our limited ultrasound, we thought that the baby was outside the womb so we told her, ‘We think you’ve got an abdominal pregnancy.’”

The woman was subsequently transferred to the NUH were the scans confirmed that she had an abdominal pregnancy.

The woman was determined to continue the pregnancy so Mary read up furiously about abdominal pregnancies to figure out a way to deal with the placenta. She consulted with S.S. Ratnam who suggested that if the baby’s progress could be monitored and the woman knew the risk, they would help her along.

One problem with abdominal pregnancies, among many others, lies with managing the placenta, the organ that nourishes the foetus through the umbilical cord. In a normal pregnancy, the placenta is

stuck of the wall of uterus.

During labour contractions, the placenta separates from the uterus and it is then delivered about 30 minutes after the baby is. However, with an abdominal pregnancy, the placenta would be connected to other organs, such as the intestines, and there is no mechanism for separating it.

Professor Ratnam suggested that after delivering the baby and cutting the umbilical cord, that a particular drug be injected into the blood vessel of the cord before it is tied up. The drug, methotrexate, would kill off the cells in the placenta, and the dead organ would be reabsorbed into the body.

For safety’s sake, the baby was delivered at 36 weeks at NUH via a procedure similar to a Caesarean. “The operation was relatively bloodless,” she recalls. After the delivery, Mary injected the methotrexate into the umbilical cord as planned and after making sure that the patient was stable, drove back to her

Courtesy of Suzan Goh

“I was going back to KK Hospital, going down the Ayer Rajah Expressway when I got the page.

I recognised the number was NUH so I turned back.”

The placenta had separated from the intestines much faster than anticipated and the patient was now bleeding internally into the abdominal cavity. “I got into theatre again; we got surgical

fellows to help us out. We found all the bleeding areas, got rid of the placenta and tied up everything.”

This was not her first encounter with an abdominal pregnancy.

As a first-year trainee in the mid1970s, she saw a woman who had been admitted to the surgical department at the then Toa Payoh Hospital. The patient had abdominal pains and when an abdominal x-ray was performed, (the only ultrasound machine in those days was in the O&G

department and it was really primitive), a foetus was found in the region of the spleen.

Unfortunately, it was not alive when the patient was operated on.

Mary’s long career as an obstetrician has seen her deliver both mother and, years later, her child. In one case, after delivering a baby at NUH, the mother turned to her and said: “‘Dr Rauff, do you know that you looked after my mother when I was in her womb and you went

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office in KK Hospital. On the way, her pager went off. (This was in the days before mobile phones.)

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Courtesy of Suzan Goh

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on to deliver me? And now you are delivering my child!’ The midwives who were assisting in the delivery all gasped; all Mary could manage was “Shhh…”

She has also delivered a father and subsequently his children as well. A baby boy she delivered by Caesarean in 1979 eventually grew up, got married and brought his wife to see Mary.

She has since delivered three of that couple’s children.

As much as she enjoys her clinical work, she also finds teaching rewarding, which was why she returned to NUS in 2001,

after a decade-long break in private practice. “When you teach, you learn; you’re forced to read up about new developments, especially if you’re preparing trainees for their postgraduate examinations.”

In addition, there is the intellectual stimulation as well. “Kids ask questions that you would never think of, about how and why things happen. That gets you thinking about why it is so, about whether you are doing something for logical reasons or just because someone has told you that is the way it is done.” Apart from teaching, being in university

Mary’s ties to SCGS run deep.

Mary’s mother had been a longtime teacher in SCGS. Mrs Ting (née Teo Seok Luan) was also the Principal of the primary school for two or three years in the late 1950s and she had a reputation for being very strict. Mary’s aunt, Miss Teo Guat Choo, taught in the school as well.

Mary’s two daughters are also old girls. One of them followed Mary into medicine and is now a

consultant and co-worker in the O&G Department of NUH. Mary’s memories of SCGS are mostly positive, though being the Principal’s daughter meant that Mary could not step out of line.

“It was terrible,” she recalls. “I had to be on my best behaviour all the time. Everybody would be looking at you and saying, ‘Mrs Ting’s daughter’.”

Nonetheless, she did manage to have fun, she recalls. “Life wasn’t as difficult as it is now. We took our examinations, we got through our examinations and parents do not scream at you if you got less than 70.”

Chinese was a bugbear for her and it caused panic for her when she reached Primary Six. “Ours was the first year we had to pass Chinese to go to secondary school.”

Interestingly, when Mary went to secondary school, SCGS did not offer Additional Mathematics and Physics. She had to study these

subjects at the Institute of Science, a private institution located at the corner of Balestier Road and Serangoon Road.

She fondly recalls Mrs Teo, her Secondary Three biology teacher that she describes as excellent, and Miss Leong (later Mrs Lee), her English teacher in Secondary Four. There were, of course, teachers that she had not such fond memories of – those that rapped knuckles and sent books flying out of the second floor windows, which then landed on poor hapless souls who were walking by.

Mary believes that her years in SCGS shaped her for the better.

“I frankly think we all need a kick or two to get into shape no matter what the child psychologists of today have got to say.”

Two generations of women are undoubtedly glad that Mary got kicked into shape and grateful that the school played a role in turning out one of the best known names in the medical fraternity today.

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has allowed her to contribute to research. “I usually give the ideas and somebody does the job,” she says modestly of a publications list that runs into seven pages. Her name appeared most recently on three papers published in 2017.

Thanks to her university position, Mary’s career also included doing work for the World Health Organisation (WHO). Between 1979 and 1987, she was on WHO steering committees related to sterilisation. The committee’s job was to advise third world countries on procedures and protocols regarding sterilisation.

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Yong Ying-I

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Leadership and Service, with Sincerity and Courage

It is remarkable how much can happen in 10 years. In 1990, Singapore had exactly one telecommunications company — Singapore Telecommunications, or Singtel. The only way to call someone overseas was to use the very expensive International Direct Dialling (IDD). No one had heard of the Internet, businesses communicated by fax, people carried pagers if they needed to be reached urgently and they used pay phones to make calls while out and about.

Courtesy of Ministry of Communications and Information

A decade later, Singtel was competing fiercely with M1 and Starhub for the hearts and wallets of customers, ordinary people toted mobile phones around and the tech savvy accessed the Internet from their home PCs via 56kbps modems.

Today, people are permanently online thanks to their smartphones.

There are nine operators offering mobile services and no one thinks twice about calling a friend overseas because they are using apps like Skype or WhatsApp. At home, people connect their laptops and tablets to broadband networks via Wi-Fi networks while pagers and pay phones have become extinct. (Fax machines are still clinging on for dear life.)

environment for the telecoms sector. Then he dropped the bombshell.

In the 1990s, it was becoming clear that it could not be business as usual if Singapore wanted to continue being a commercial hub. That is when the government decided to liberalise the telecommunications sector.

The government wanted to allow new technologies, new companies and new industries to proliferate and bring economic growth to Singapore.

DPM Lee explained to Ying-I, who is now the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information, that he believed she understood what was required because she had previously worked with him and MAS colleagues to liberalise the financial sector. The government now wanted her to do the same for the infocommunications sector: to open it to global competition and make it more commercial.

He explained to her that the government wanted to set up a new body that combined the regulatory and development

Ying-I, who had trained as an economist, was taken aback. “I know nothing about computers,” she recalls saying to DPM Lee.

That is how Ying-I became the first Chief Executive of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), which was formed by merging the National Computer Board (NCB) and the Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS).

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It was at that point that thenDeputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called Yong Ying-I (SCGS: 1970 - 1979) into his office.

“My colleagues were suggesting to me that you could go and form it,” said DPM Lee to his thenPrincipal Private Secretary.

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It was officially launched in late1999 and her job was about, as she says, “creating the future.”

During her tenure, Ying-I oversaw the full liberalisation of the telecommunications market in 2000 and launched the Infocomm 21 masterplan.

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In 2011 and 2012, she was appointed Permanent Secretary (National Research & Development) and Permanent Secretary (Public Service Division) respectively. In 2019, she gave those up to become the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information.

Although she did not have a She is also the Permanent Secretary technology background, she said She was at the Manpower Ministry (Cybersecurity) in the Prime the bigger challenge was bringing until 2005 and then joined the Minister’s Office. two different cultures together.

Health Ministry as its Permanent The people from NCB were Secretary until 2012. promoters of technology while the TAS staff had been focused Image credit to Challenge Magazine, Public Service Division on regulating the market. Her job required her to recognise both the expertise and limitations of the individuals under her and blend everyone together into a strong performing team, she says. Fortunately, while she did not have a degree in computer science, she did have an MBA and the management insights she learned at Harvard came in very handy.

Of course, she did have to learn about the technology too. “If you don’t understand the subject, you can’t exactly be effective so you do have to learn as fast as possible.”

Ying-I headed the IDA until 2002 when she was tapped to become Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Manpower.

Even though, she continued her association with it, being its Deputy Chairman from 2003 to 2007 and its Chairman from 2007 to 2015.

During her tenure, the ministry also entacted laws to protect foreign domestic workers, ensuring that maids were not allowed to clean windows from the outside, and requiring them to be above 23 before coming to Singapore.

The latter was in response to the struggles faced by underaged Indonesian maids in adjusting to life in Singapore.

The ministry also set up regulations requiring companies hiring workers from abroad to ensure decent accommodation for their foreign workers.

“The MOM was very interesting,” she recalls. “It was economic, social and national security, all combined together.”

At the Health Ministry, she worked with then-Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan to restructure the health system, restructuring the two large existing clusters — the National Healthcare Group and Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) — into a few smaller ones.

She also did a lot of work on setting up the National Electronic Health Records System.

“Minister Khaw wanted one medical record for every Singaporean, regardless of whether you see a GP or if you go to a specialist,” she recalls. (He wanted electronic medical data to be able to flow seamlessly across hospitals, to follow patients’ movements.) To achieve this, she pulled all the IT people from the hospitals into one company called the Integrated Health Information

System. They then built a system that allows for the sharing of medical records, x-rays, and other images. The first phase of the system was rolled out in 2011.

“Touch wood, if you have an accident and you go to Tan Tock Seng in an ambulance, they should be able to call up your records from Khoo Teck Puat (Hospital), which matters because you could be allergic to some medications,” she notes.

One of the bigger challenges that Ying-I tackled during her time at the Ministry was not a specific project. It was, instead, about dealing with humans, specifically doctors.

“Doctors are passionate, wonderful, difficult people,” she says with affection. “They are super brilliant, super passionate about doing what they do and they are individualists. That is their training.” As a result, they proudly proclaimed that managing them is like herding cats, she says.

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Her career at the highest echelons of the civil service has allowed her to be involved in major issues that have affected Singapore and Singaporeans. When she joined the Ministry of Manpower, Singapore was in the depths of a recession. To save jobs, she worked on changing the wage structure to allow for flexible wages. She also partnered the trade unions to persuade workers to accept pay cuts rather than face redundancies.

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What makes it rewarding is that everyone is working together to try to save lives. As an administrator, I asked myself what value I can bring, to enable them to do their jobs effectively.

Subsequently, when she was at the National Research & Development Office, she played an instrumental role in the creation of AI Singapore or AI.SG, the national research and innovation programme for Artificial Intelligence that was launched in 2017.

Today, she is working with Minister S. Iswaran at the Ministry of Communications and Information on connecting Singaporeans to opportunities, communities and government to achieve a vision of a thriving digital economy where every business is digitallyempowered, every worker is digitally-skilled and every citizen is digitally-connected.

Growing up, Ying-I did not plan to become a civil servant, let alone dream of becoming a Permanent Secretary. Her father was in banking then, so Ying-I had vague thoughts of following in his footsteps. After leaving SCGS, she attained a Humanities scholarship and studied in Hwa Chong Junior College.

She went on to read economics in Downing College, Cambridge (the same college as her father) on a government scholarship and returned in 1985 to join the Administrative Service.

She worked in the Finance Ministry, the Trade and Industry Ministry, and the Home Affairs Ministry before becoming the Principal Private Secretary to then Deputy PM Lee Hsien Loong in 1997.

DPM Lee became the Chairman of the Monetary Authority of

Singapore the next year and she worked with him on a number of important matters including liberalising the financial sector, bringing together DBS Bank and POSBank and having a ringside seat in watching the MAS handle Singapore’s response to the Asian financial crisis.

She also worked with him on other projects such as developing the National Education programme.

“He, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Goh Chok Tong felt quite strongly that we must begin to know something about our history, about what makes Singapore tick, why we do what we do, and about our relations with our neighbours.”

Looking back at her career, she says that she has been fortunate.

“I’ve had a career where I greatly enjoy what I do. It’s interesting, challenging, meaningful work.

There are people who comment that civil servants have many meetings. When we (Permanent Secretaries) meet each other, it’s discussing trade-offs between right and right; trade-offs between competing or conflicting goals; trade-offs between economic goals and social goals, or between social goals and security objectives. The challenge is to find a practical solution to move Singapore forward.

Looking back over her career, she believes that the SCGS values of Courage and Sincerity are very relevant in the workplace today.

Courage is necessary so that people will try new things and not be afraid to fail. Nobody likes to fail but there are lessons to be learnt from failure, she notes.

Resilience, which is a kind of courage, is also important. “In a boxing ring, if you get knocked down, do you get up or do you just give up?”

Sincerity is important, because “you cannot lead people, influence people, if people think you are not sincere. People see through that very quickly; your staff see through that immediately.”

Her advice to girls today is to do something that they are passionate about so that they will be willing to go through the extra mile. At the same time, they should be guided by a moral compass.

“You can make a lot of money being unethical, you can become rich and powerful by stepping on others, by hurting other people.”

However, it’s not merely about staying on the right side of the law but about doing what’s right, she notes. It is important to be guided by ethos and ethics.

In short, girls should pursue their dreams but be anchored by values; values like sincerity, courage, generosity and service.

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Courtesy of SCGS

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Merlene Toh-Emerson A Most Excellent Example of Service

While SCGS girls distinguish themselves in many ways, they tend to do so in unique ways.

Take Merlene Toh-Emerson for example.

Merlene (SCGS: 1967 - 1976) is probably the only former SCGS girl to be awarded the MBE, which stands for Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

She was given the honour in 2016 for her political and public service. Since 2006, Merlene has been active in social housing (what is known as public housing in Singapore) and in helping the Chinese and Vietnamese community in the United Kingdom (UK).

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Courtesy of Merlene Toh-Emerson

Courtesy of Merlene Toh-Emerson

the party to Richmond’s housing association. (In the UK, housing associations are non-profit organisations that focus on lowcost social housing).

a mediator and through her work mediating neighbourhood disputes, learned about the less fortunate.

Lien Viet focuses on community outreach for former boat people who live in that part of the English capital. It set up That experience also opened her gardening projects, helped the eyes to the power and importance unemployed find work, assisted with translation and provided of politics. “Working in the community, visiting people in their housing support services. homes, you realise that politics has an impact on people’s lives.” As a Over time, the need for Lien Viet result, she was inspired to join the has become less pressing and it Merlene’s interest in social has recently been absorbed back Liberal Democrats in 2004. housing came about after the into the parent body. Efforts are UK-trained and former City now underway to record refugee In 2006, after the Liberal solicitor moved back to London in Democrats won the local elections stories and they hope to set up a 1999 with her husband and their permanent exhibition so that this in the district of Richmond in three sons. There, she became community can be remembered.

London, she was appointed by

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She is also politically active in the UK. She stood as a Liberal Democrat to be a Member of Parliament in the constituency of Hammersmith in 2010 and for the London Assembly in 2012 and 2016. Most recently, she stood as an Independent in the City of London to be a Common Councilman, in a by-election in 2018.

Subsequently, when a Vietnamese-focused subsidiary of another housing association was looking for a leader in 2014, her name came up, which is how she ended up chairing the Lien Viet Housing Association. It takes care of social housing for Vietnamese speakers in four districts in northeast London.

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In addition to working with the Vietnamese in the UK, Merlene has also been active in helping the Chinese community.

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In 2006, she co-founded the Chinese Liberal Democrats, a group formed to promote closer links between the Liberal Democrat party and the Chinese community in the UK. According to Merlene, the group has worked to raise the profile of, and issues of concern to the Chinese community within the party as well as in society as a whole.

Two years later, she co-founded the Chinese Welfare Trust, a cross-party charity to look into the housing needs of the Chinese elderly living in London.

Today, the trust has expanded to look after this demographic throughout the UK.

It has conducted research on the changing landscape, challenges and future of Chinese community centres in the UK and it is now raising funds to hire its first Chinese-speaking specialist mental health nurse to work with dementia patients and their carers.

Racial inequality is another area that Merlene is active in. In 2017, she became chair of a LibDem policy working group on this topic. Two years later, she spoke at the LibDem conference in York where she proposed a motion on “Eradicating Race Inequality”.

A shortened policy motion was debated at the conference and passed unanimously.

Her work on fighting racial inequality is something she is proud of. “We produced a 12,000-word policy paper after conducting research, taking evidence and formulating the party’s policy in areas as diverse as education, employment to housing and health.”

This group is isolated, marginalised and lonely because they do not have the necessary language skills. The trust works with different housing associations Not all her efforts to help the Chinese community are partyto help them cater to the special related. In 2015, while on holiday needs of their Chinese residents.

Courtesy of Merlene Toh-Emerson

in France, she learned about the contributions of Chinese Labour Corps to the war effort during World War I. It is a little-known fact that some 140,000 people were recruited from northern China to serve as manual labour with British and French forces during the Great War. However, while there are over 40,000 memorials to WWI in the UK, not one is dedicated to the Chinese Labour Corps.

Moved by their sacrifice, she and a team of people have started a campaign to remember this group. A memorial made out of

Although she does a lot of work with the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities in the UK, she is also interested in international affairs. Merlene is a trustee of the Sir Heinz Koeppler Trust which aims to promote international peace and security through discussions about pressing international political, economic and security issues. She has also visited Kyrgyzstan and Turkey as part of her work with the Lib Dems.

International trade, in particular, is close to her heart. She is part of the England China Business Forum and is also a freeman, as they call it, in the splendidly named Worshipful Company of World Traders, a City of Londonbased association devoted to raising awareness and understanding of, and standards of practice in, world trade.

Given all the work she does in the UK, it is perhaps not surprising that she would be awarded the MBE, which was presented by Princess Anne during a ceremony in Buckingham Palace.

Courtesy of Merlene Toh-Emerson

Because royalty was involved, there were some extra elements beyond just walking up on stage and shaking hands. Part of the ceremony involved curtsying on meeting the sister of Prince Charles and sharing a private conversation.

Fortunately, Merlene only needed a refresher course in curtsying as this valuable life skill was one of the many things she learned in school.

“I was very good at curtsying; I was an SCGS dancer!”

Although now a British citizen based in London, she makes it a point to return to Singapore at least once a year to see her family and catch up with old friends, including former SCGS classmates.

The school holds many warm memories for her and she said the school’s motto is something that she has tried to live up to: Service and Generosity, through her efforts to help the Southeast Asian and Chinese communities in the UK; Courage because “you need courage to be a politician and Sincerity because, as she says, being a politician is all about honesty and accountability.” Most excellently put.

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white Hunan marble and standing at 9.6 metre has been carved in Hubei, China. The campaign is now looking for a suitable location in London to place it.

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Sleeping on the Job

Vijaya Esuvaranathan (SCGS: 1970 - 1979), a former Head Prefect, although described by her many friends as warm, outgoing, gregarious and interesting, is actually best known for putting people to sleep! She is a consultant anaesthesiologist in private practice and is also a visiting consultant at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and at the National Cancer Centre.

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Courtesy of Vijaya Esuvaranathan

Courtesy of Vijaya Esuvaranathan

live life to the fullest so one would not have regrets.

continue her training in paediatric anaesthesia in the United Kingdom.

Vijaya says she stumbled into

anaesthesia. She received an offer She returned in 2003 to work at for paediatric training in Adelaide NUH, enjoying the challenge of but the opportunity never came working with premature babies her way in Singapore so she and children. Apart from smaller decided to do anaesthesia, with doses, the drugs used for children a special interest in paediatric could be quite different from anaesthesia. She began her those for adults, she explained. training in anaesthesiology Newborns and infants who in 1993 working at the KK undergo general anaesthesia Women’s and Children’s Hospital, typically need surgery for Singapore General Hospital and complicated medical conditions. the National University Hospital “The younger the child, the more (NUH). She then decided to tricky it becomes,” she says.

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Vijaya studied at the Flinders University of South Australia in Adelaide before returning to Singapore in 1991. Her first houseman posting was at the gynaecological oncology unit at the Flinders Medical Centre.

This had an immense impact on her medical career. The compassion and honesty with which her consultant dealt with his terminally-ill patients shaped how she subsequently managed her patients. Her experiences with her patients here showed her the strength and resilience of human nature. It also taught her to try to

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Today, however, her patients tend to be much older and Vijaya likes seeing her patients and talking to them before the operation so as to build up a rapport with them. She says this reassures them and establishes trust. “After I explain everything that is going to happen, I ask them to start focusing on things that make them calm and happy. This is hopefully what they’ll dream about if they are going to dream!”

One of her patients was a lead singer in a musical. “He asked me if he could sing as he went off to sleep and I said ‘Sure! Go ahead!’

So he was singing when he fell asleep in mid-sentence. And when he woke up, he actually started singing again!”

She laughs as she relates this anecdote and then becomes serious as she shares what motivates her: SCGS fostered a deep desire in her to help others, so much of her satisfaction and happiness in practising medicine comes from the opportunity it provides. Her parents, both teachers, were also powerful role models. “Throughout my entire childhood, we would have kids in Courtesy of Vijaya Esuvaranathan

The airline sent her a nice thank you note and a voucher which she did not use.

She observed that travelling was so very fascinating because there are differences not only between people, but also between the cultures and values of countries.

She once attended a conference on hypothermia onboard on a Russian icebreaker in Antarctica!

It was a serious meeting on hypothermia but whenever there was a sighting of whales or icebergs, the whole conference room emptied to observe the event. Interestingly, attending that conference helped her land her first job in the UK. She recalls On another occasion in the USA, the consultants telling her: “We she was asked, after tending to thought it was so fascinating that a fellow passenger, to sign an you went to a conference on indemnity form, so the airline could hypothermia in Antarctica and not be sued by the passenger! wanted to hear more about it.”

On yet another occasion, at But for an accident of fate, Vijaya Heathrow Airport, she successfully would not have ended up in resuscitated an elderly gentleman SCGS. Both her parents had who had had a cardiac arrest and affiliations to Methodist Girls performed cardio-pulmonary School and she had expected resuscitation until the ambulance to go there. However, Vijaya’s crew arrived. The man had been an mother, whilst invigilating the Air New Zealand passenger.

PSLE examination, met the

legendary SCGS Principal, Miss Tan Sock Kern, who encouraged her to enrol Vijaya in SCGS instead.

Vijaya is delighted with the decision: “I loved all my school days; we had so much fun.

Literature was a big thing.

SCGS was the school that developed my love for reading and that’s something that has stayed with me.”

Vijaya recalls that school life was not usually stressful.

“SCGS taught me not to be competitive – we were cooperative; we were friends.

There was this camaraderie; a group of us still meet up almost every other month.”

The former Head Prefect believes that SCGS leaves a stamp on all its students. “I can always tell an SCGS girl, even at work, by how they conduct themselves and how they speak. There’s just something special about them,” she says with a big smile.

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the house,” she recalls. Her father was a math teacher, who even after he retired, would volunteer to teach the children of friends.

He would even delay going on holidays so as to help these students with their examinations.

Asked about other interesting events in her career, she related how her love for travel has led to some unusual experiences in responding to, “Is there a doctor on board?” Once, enroute to Chile, a patient who had been suffering from diarrhoea developed chest pains and an irregular heart beat.

Suspecting that his potassium level was low, she fed him bananas and was gratified to see him improve.

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Yeo Lian Sim A Cog, not a Wheel

When the Singapore dollar came under attack in 1985, Yeo Lian Sim (SCGS: 1956 - 1965) was at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which was the tip of the spear in the effort to defend the Singapore dollar.

Singapore was experiencing its first recession since Independence and currency speculators believed that the government would devalue the currency in response.

As a result, the speculators began attacking the Singapore dollar.

While she declined to go into detail about what exactly she did in MAS’ fight against the speculators, a history of MAS published for its 40th anniversary noted that Dr Goh Keng Swee wanted to fight back and punish the speculators. Dr Goh was one of the founding fathers of modern Singapore and the Deputy Chairman of the MAS at the time.

Image credit to Council for Board Diversity

Dr Goh made a public statement explaining why the government would not devalue the dollar and announced that the MAS would defend the currency, and that is exactly what it did. In a show of force, on one single day, Monday, September 16, the MAS spent US$100 million to buy Singapore dollars.

The Singapore dollar overnight interest rates at which banks borrow from each other, reached 105 per cent the next day, and 120 per cent the day after.

These actions punished short sellers. Within four days, the Singapore dollar strengthened to $2.20 against the US dollar.

The speculators backed down because of Singapore’s war chest and because of MAS’ obvious determination.

J.Y. Pillay, the Managing Director of MAS at the time, said in MAS’ 40th anniversary history: “Dr Goh took the stance that we would fight it, irrespective of how much it was going to cost us in foreign treasure, because the alternative

of a rapidly declining currency was too bad to contemplate.” Dr Goh had been told it would take a few billion of Singapore’s foreign reserves to succeed, and he gave MAS the green light to go ahead.

Looking back, Lian Sim said that those were tense times and success was not assured. It was also a tremendous learning opportunity. Observing the bosses taught her that in a crisis, judgement is important and judgement should be well-founded. “Having done

Image credit to Council for Board Diversity

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the groundwork, having the understanding stands you in good stead.”

system of managing its exchange rate against a floating basket of currencies.

When Lian Sim joined the MAS in 1971 as a freshly minted economist from the University of Singapore, the central bank had just been set up. It was an exciting time as that was also the year that the US abandoned the gold standard and moved to a floating exchange rate. To this day, Lian Sim can recall that the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Singapore dollar just before the US dropped convertibility was 3.06122. “It then devalued to 2.81955,” she says.

In the late 1990s, Lian Sim was tasked to regulate capital markets and there, she was involved in an important piece of legislation. “MAS wrote the Securities and Futures Act to take us to a disclosure regime.

Instead of trying to control the risks, you disclose risk and participants make their own decisions.“

Ending the direct convertibility between the US dollar and gold meant that a three-decade old global system of fixed exchange rates would come to an end and there was huge uncertainty about what would happen after that.

Image credit to Council for Board Diversity

As an economist at MAS, Lian Sim was involved in analysing the implications of the move and thinking through the options available for Singapore. The work led to Singapore’s current

Futures Act of 2001 would, among other things, codify the change in philosophy.

That Singapore now has a strong dollar, is a global banking hub and has a thriving financial services industry is testimony to people who contributed over the years.

Lian Sim spent three decades at the central bank before leaving as a Deputy Managing director. After a secondment to Temasek Holdings, she joined the From 1997, the MAS moved away Singapore Exchange in 2004 from a policy of deciding what goes and worked for close to 10 years to the market to one that would as head of risk management allow investors to make informed and regulation. decisions. The Securities and

to SGX, and still ‘manages’ her home and family.

different in the Red Cross than as a mathematics teacher.”

She is also a Director of Shared Services for Charities, which provides cost-effective professional resources to help other charities raise their level of governance.

Lian Sim encountered Mrs Fok many years later. She was walking around Paragon shopping mall and was suddenly hailed by the legendary teacher. “She called me by name and I was so chuffed,” Lian Sim recalls. “It made my day, As a former economist and central my week, my year!” banker, Lian Sim must have a head for mathematics. It is a facility Lian Sim looks back on her school Singapore’s Business Times she developed when she was in days at SCGS with fondness. notes that the Catalist board was school. Lessons in SCGS were “I have happy memories of created during Lian Sim’s tenure. not boring, especially with the the school.”

The Catalist is one of the two enlightening Mrs Choo and the boards of the SGX and was set fearsome Mrs Fok. One lesson that she took away up in 2007 as a platform for small from SCGS was to always do companies with little or no track “One time, half the class got our her best. record to raise capital. books thrown out the window.

And then we went downstairs “I had the feeling that my Lian Sim also pushed for listed and the kachang puteh (‘kachang’ teachers had done their best companies to issue sustainability means ‘nuts’ and ‘puteh’ means for me and now it’s up to me reports, addressing environmental ‘white’ in Malay.) man had got to do my part, and do my and social factors that could to them first,” she laughs. The best. The more effort I make, enhance or reduce their economic experience did not put Lian Sim the more I benefit. It really is sustainability. Few companies off the subject. up to me now.” discussed these important matters in their annual reports. The Although Mrs Fok had a “You carry that through the rest of sustainability report was initially reputation for being fierce, Lian your life.” voluntary but is now mandatory.

Sim saw another side of her during her time in the school’s Today, Lian Sim has retired from Red Cross Unit, which Mrs Fok corporate life but is still an advisor was in charge of. “She was very

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On her retirement in 2013, Magnus Bocker, then the SGX Chief Executive, paid tribute to her efforts, noting that: “Lian Sim has built SGX’s risk management and regulatory function into a well-respected, professional organisation with a reputation for expertise and execution. She has been tireless in her pursuit of regulating a fair, orderly and transparent marketplace.”

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Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

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From left to right: Natascha Ekawati Putri, Faye Lynette Lim, Yap Yoon Sim, Joanne Ngeow, Melissa Teo, Patricia Neo, Miriam Tao, Choo Su Pin, Esther Chang

The Cancer Warriors of NCCS At the Forefront of Cancer Research and Treatment

Thanks to the school’s traditional emphasis on literature and the performing arts, SCGS has produced more than its fair share of actors, singers, dancers and performers. That is not to say that SCGS is not as strong in the sciences.

One only has to look at National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) where nine old girls are currently working for, or closely associated with, one of the nation’s leading institutes for the research and treatment of cancer.

The nine are medical oncologists Joanne Ngeow, Yap Yoon Sim, Miriam Tao, Choo Su Pin and Esther Chang, radiation oncologist Faye Lynette Lim, surgical oncologists Melissa Teo and Natascha Ekawati Putri, and palliative medicine doctor Patricia Neo.

Joanne Ngeow (SCGS: 1987 - 1992) is the unofficial spokesperson for the unofficial group of SCGS alumni at NCCS. She is a Senior Consultant and also Head of the Cancer Genetics Service. Genomic medicine is the use of genomic information or genomic clues

from patients to decide how best to treat them. Joanne is also an Associate Professor at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKC Medicine) at Nanyang Technological University.

in Singapore. The study’s ultimate goal is to develop new approaches for the prediction, prevention, early detection and better treatment of these chronic diseases.

In addition, she is one of the Principal Investigators in the Health for Life in Singapore (HELIOS) Study, a state-of-the-art national prospective cohort study.

The study aims to identify the genetic and environmental factors that underpin the development of cancer, obesity, diabetes, and other complex diseases

Joanne treats patients and conducts research. She sees patients with familial cancers, young patients with cancer and rare types of cancer.

However, while curing a patient is important, Joanne believes that it is even more important to detect and prevent people from getting cancer in the first place.

“I don’t want to treat cancer.

I want to prevent cancer.

I want to understand why some people get it and some don’t, the determinants of that, so we can implement better prevention policies.”

“If you have a Stage 0 cancer or a Stage 1 cancer, you surgically remove it, that guy is completely cured without the need for chemo or treatment.

The problem with cancer though is people (especially local patients!) do not present at Stage 0 or Stage 1 and delay seeking help.”

Happy Schooldays at Emerald Hill. Courtesy of Joanne Ngeow

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The presence of nine SCGS alumni in just one, relatively small, medical institute, illustrates how the school has also done a sterling job in teaching science and shaping students who later go on to serve society as doctors.

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Joanne’s aim is to improve the science behind identifying highrisk individuals and convincing these people to be screened.

“The war on cancer, in my mind, can only be won by preventing cancer,” she believes.

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“One in 10 cancers may be hereditary in nature which means, if I can stop one in 10 persons from developing advanced cancers by detecting them early, I would be very satisfied with that as my contribution to society.”

Joanne ended up in medicine because she likes solving puzzles.

In school, she was busy doing many different things: She was a member of the science club, badminton and netball school Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

teams and also deeply involved in backstage work for dance and drama. In Secondary Two, she wrote a play about Singapore during the Merdeka years that was one of five selected from across Singapore by the Ministry of Education’s History Pageant. It was staged at St Andrew’s Junior College as part of the 25th anniversary of Singapore’s independence.

“Rehearsals and putting the play together with my friends was a lot of fun and I’m very proud of our production,” she recalls.

Joanne feels that her time in SCGS certainly helped her in her career. “The emphasis on literature has been very helpful in terms of developing critical thinking, in terms of helping us communicate and understand how that might be perceived by other folks. It’s been helpful in clinical care as well as in how I communicate my science.

“I think I’ve been successful because I’ve been able to communicate my science to people from different walks of life.”

Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

Senior Consultant Patricia Neo (SCGS: 1986 - 1989) actually knew Joanne back in school.

Patricia was the netball captain while Joanne was on the team.

Patricia is the Head of the Division of Supportive and Palliative Care at NCCS where she leads a multidisciplinary team comprising doctors, nurses, social workers and counsellors to look after cancer patients and patients with end-stage chronic diseases.

Their aim is to try to “alleviate suffering by treating their physical symptoms, attending to their psychosocial or spiritual needs, supporting them not just in the hospital but also back

into the community,” says Patricia. Beyond clinical care, the team is also involved in research, education and clinical programme development.

Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

To Patricia, SCGS was crucial in “building my confidence as a teenager, shaping my career choice and imparting leadership skills. Not just with experience in the netball school team and as a prefect, but through meaningful school activities like participating in class plays for History class or cooking for the teachers as part of Home Economics class for Teacher’s Day.

Senior Consultant Yap Yoon Sim (SCGS: 1979 - 1988) specialises in treating women with breast cancer. She is also a clinician scientist who hopes to do more research on novel therapies and personalised medicine. In addition, she wants to improve health outcomes by promoting breast cancer awareness.

“Many of us left school feeling that the world was our oyster; any dream is possible for a SCGS girl as long as we put our hearts and mind to it.”

She became an oncologist because while a junior doctor in Australia (where she went to medical school), oncology appeared to be the most

meaningful and relevant field to her, in part because she knew quite a few people who had cancer.

Yoon Sim has fond memories of going to Centrepoint after school — something her daughter, currently a student in the secondary division, cannot do now that SCGS has moved.

Nonetheless, her daughter is enjoying school life and having fun with her friends, says Yoon Sim.

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Patricia started off training in medical oncology but ended up doing palliative medicine after a side trip to Sweden to accompany her husband who was working on his PhD. When she returned to Singapore, she decided to get training in palliative care. She was seconded to Assisi Hospice as its Clinical Director for four years before rejoining NCCS in her current capacity.

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Esther Chang (SCGS: 1998 - 2001) is a medical oncologist who is starting her career at NCCS as an Associate Consultant. Esther says she had “very kind and supportive science teachers in SCGS who sparked my interest in science subjects. Being an SCGS girl also inculcated values of compassion and service and I saw myself working as a healthcare provider from a very young age.”

Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

As a radiation oncologist, Faye Lynette Lim (SCGS: 1985 - 1991) treats breast, colorectal, hepato— pancreato-biliary and upper gastrointestinal cancers. A Senior Consultant at NCCS, she knew she wanted to be a doctor from an early age. “I have always wanted to be a doctor and in fact, all my siblings are doctors! My father is a doctor and he had impressed on me from a young age what that means.”

feverishly come up with chants and slogans and to sew our banners.”

She describes her time in school as “one of the best times of my life. We were such a small school, everyone knew each other. We were like family.” She particularly recalls Sports Day, when the class would “come together to

“Today, SCGS is bigger and shinier, a modern school for the modern woman of the world.

But underneath, her heart is still the same — that of a grand Peranakan matriarch.”

Faye says that her daughter is currently a Primary One student in SCGS, loves belonging to a school that has such a rich heritage. “She loves to ask about the differences between now and then, and I tell her that there really isn’t any. At the end of the day SCGS is a school that will provide her with the environment to thrive.

She became interested in oncology when she entered medical school, in part because “the nature of the specialty was dealing with the very sick and emotionally vulnerable and I felt very drawn to being able to walk with patients through their cancer diagnosis and treatment.

“Medical oncology is one field that embraces these exact values of compassion and service because you cannot be a good medical oncologist without being empathetic to patients who have these very life changing and often devastating illnesses.”

For Esther, her best memories of school are of the orientation camp in Secondary One and the overseas trip to Malacca in Secondary Two. “The friends I made in lower secondary stayed with me as I grew up, even though we went to different JCs and chose different careers.”

Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

Senior Consultant Miriam Tao (SCGS: 1970 - 1971) is in the Lymphoma Team at NCCS. Her research interests include all areas of care related to lymphoma. She is a member of the Singapore Lymphoma Study group and is actively involved in prospective trials in both single and multicentre settings, locally, nationally and internationally.

She is also a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine for undergraduate education and was an Adjunct Associate Professor with Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.

Miriam was only in SCGS briefly, in Primary Four and Five, before she left to study abroad. Nonetheless, the friends she made have become “lifelong friends who she has reconnected with 20 years later with monthly birthday dinners, holidays together and growing older gracefully together.”

In work in SingHealth, there is also a strong camaraderie amongst alumni, especially through great connectors like Joanne and raucous times on WhatsApp chats.

“Being part of SCGS has been a blessing to me.”

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Although she was a science student, she says she enjoyed her Literature classes tremendously.

“Even though I didn’t pursue further studies or a career in the Arts, I am so thankful Literature was a compulsory subject.”

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Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

Surgical oncologist Melissa Teo (SCGS: 1982 - 1991) is experienced in the management of stomach and colorectal cancers, sarcoma, melanoma and peritoneal disease. She is currently in private practice at Melissa Teo Surgery. She was the former Head of Surgical Oncology at NCCS.

teacher of many, a role model for female surgeons and a pioneer in her field. She is an Adjunct Professor at the DukeNUS Medical School, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

Melissa is one of the first female surgical oncologists in Singapore, specialising in the most complex cancer surgeries. She is a beloved

194 Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore

Natascha Ekawati Putri (SCGS: 1993 - 2002) is a Consultant in the Division of Surgical Oncology at NCCS. She attended medical school in NUS, and completed her Residency in General Surgery in 2016. Since then, she has been training and working at NCCS. Her subspecialty is surgery for head and neck tumours. “I work in a fantastic team with individuals who are all exceptionally devoted to the common goal of giving

our patients the best treatment possible.”

She believes her 10 years at SCGS have moulded her into the person she is today.

“SCGS taught me to always be sincere in my interactions with others, have courage in the face of adversity, be generous with the blessings I’ve been gifted with, and live in the service of mankind.”

“We don’t need to follow the norm. We can create a new norm. SCGS nurtured us to be independent, self-reliant women. If I look at my SCGS cohort, I dare say that most are doing pretty well in life even if we were not the most academic in school.”

She also says that the best thing about SCGS is the friends she has made who are still her “best pals” today.

know we have each other’s backs.

I loved going to school to hang out with my friends.”

According to Joanne, it was very surprising to all of them to discover that so many of them work at the same centre and notes that “in the Cancer Centre, we tend to be the very different ones.

We break a lot of moulds. Most of us have lots of ‘extra curricular activities’ within the centre.”

“We do the science, but we do “We may be miles apart from more than that. It’s probably each other but whenever we are what has made us stand out Su Pin became a doctor because together, it’s the same old craziness and led to some of us being in she wanted to help the sick people and sense of familiarity. We always leadership positions.” get better. “The human contact, the application of scientific knowledge and problem solving for people, and helping humankind as a whole appealed to me and still appeals to me,” she says.

She says SCGS helped her by making her independent, and giving her self-confidence as well as the ability to think for herself.

It taught her that “we are all welleducated and capable people and nothing should stop us from pursuing what we believe in.

Image credit to National Cancer Centre Singapore`

195 SINGAPORE CHINESE GIRLS’ SCHOOL

Finally, Choo Su Pin (SCGS: 1980 - 1989) is a visiting consultant at NCCS and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.

She is now in private practice, in Curie Oncology, but until recently, she was the Chief of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Department, and Deputy Head of the Medical Oncology Division at NCCS. She was also the Founding Director of the Experimental Cancer Treatment Unit and Chair of the Clinical Trials Steering Committee.