20: Covering Technology and Business in Asia - Interview with Dr. Bernard Leong, Head of Post Office Network & Digital Services at Singapore Post and Host of Analyse Asia Podcast
STEM Diversity Podcast
English - December 31, 2017 01:31 - 29 minutes - 28.8 MBTechnology Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Bernard started Analyse Asia podcast about three years ago, as a way to do long-form storytelling, in order to cover business and technology in Asia. The podcast is focused on companies who have at least received a Series B round of funding, and the movers and shakers in that world. Guests include executives of US companies based in Asia, executives of Asian companies, and industry watchers and journalists. Bernard is planning to grow the podcast into a broader media platform.
Bernard is Head of Post Office Network and Digital Services at Singapore Post (at the time of recording). Singapore Post is a publicly listed company. It's the largest global logistics provider across Asia Pacific for ecommerce logistics. As part of the executive leadership team, Bernard helped bring Alibaba into investing $282 million into SingPost. Bernard is responsible for the digital strategy across the entire company (except for the ecommerce team, which is run like an independent startup). He built out the digital platform to connect customers to SingPost through web, mobile, and even physical kiosks, as part of a larger, longer migration strategy as the demographics become more digitally savvy over time.
Bernard grew up in a traditional Chinese family in the 1970s in Singapore. He was interested in space at a young age, influenced by the Space Race at the time. He studied Physics and Material Science at the National University of Singapore for an undergrad degree, and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University for a PhD degree. His thesis was in cosmology, investigating big bang background radiation to study the early universe. He also worked in the Human Genome Project at the Sanger Institute. He even did research in economics.
Bernard founded two startups after leaving academia. SGEntreprenuers, a media startup, and Chalkboard, a location-based advertising company. After the two companies, he decided that he needed to learn how to scale companies and how to build culture. So he entered the corporate world to learn that. Eventually, he wants to build three companies: A media company, a finance company, and a real estate company.
Bernard was already mentoring students as a PhD student, continuing to do when he was working in the startups and at SingPost.
Bernard's career advice that he actually uses himself is:
Learn from Everyone
Follow No One
Observe the Patterns
Work like Hell
National University of Singapore
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