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About The Event
We had the pleasure of having Veron Wong, Praveen Tekchandani, and Roy Ling share their leadership experience and expertise on ESG. Through their sharing and our participants’ interactions, we explored the importance of ESG and how we need to move from addressing just shareholders to multiple stakeholders for the ESG landscape.
Key Takeaways
1️⃣ ESG is an integrated (and often collective) component of how our organisations thrive in 2023. We are likely all doing it in some form of capacity. It is not just about disclosures but, more importantly, how it aligns with other leadership pillars around employee motivation, talent mobility, and job (re)design etc.
2️⃣ ESG has upfront costs that are inevitable yet important to establish good infrastructures. We should prioritise seeing ESG’s potential and development from a range of perspectives that prioritise upside risks (of business opportunities), rather than downside risks (of potential financial losses).
3️⃣ ESG should not be something that only leaders at companies are interested in – every employee can contribute. For example, employees can prioritise vendors like green caterers who use limited disposable cutlery or recyclable material.
4️⃣ ESG goals should form a part of the CEO's performance targets and he or she should be measured by this. What gets measured, gets done.
Key Moments
Featured Panellists
Veron Wong
Veron is the Enterprise Risk leader in EY SG Consulting and key client servicing leader for the Government and Public Healthcare sector in Singapore. As a thought leader in the risk and governance space, Veron has also conducted sessions with business leaders and practitioners on ways to evolve their Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) programs to achieve greater value, such as integrating sustainability considerations.
Veron has led many ERM implementation projects for first adopters, and has assisted other organisations with existing ERM programs in adopting advanced techniques to further their maturity in various sectors (i.e. considerations in risks for ESG).
Veron has been a speaker and panellist for ESG-related seminars and webinars for organisations, sharing perspectives on how she adopted the ESG developments in her engagements with clients and prospects. She has also conducted seminars and training on risk management practices for corporations of different sizes and sector. She is also part of the EY team who partnered with ISCA to develop their ERM learning module for their members.
Veron also has international experience leading large-scale projects with a high degree of complexity for major clients across Asia, Oceania, Europe and US, prior to joining EY in areas of risk management and process improvement.
Apart from her role in EY, Veron has other areas of appointments and related engagements, including: Core member of the EY partnership leading EY Government and Public Sector; Board member of ISCA Membership Growth and Engagement Committee; Key lead partner for many engagements in the government and public sector including MOH, AIC, HPB, MOHH etc.; Co-developed nominating committee guide for Charities and IPCs with NVPC, SGX Diversity Committee, SID, and MCCY.
Praveen Tekchandani
Praveen is the Deputy Climate Change and Sustainability Services Leader for EY SG and helps clients provide advisory or assurance service in the field of Sustainability. He has carried out assignments for various clients spanning MNCs, government, statutory boards, MDBs, private companies, and not-for-profits across Asia-Pacific. He has helped clients develop Net Zero strategy for global operations and supported in the operationalisation of strategies as well.
Praveen led the project to support the National Environmental Agency (NEA) in developing a measurement and reporting framework for Carbon Tax and is now a qualified Carbon Tax lead assessor by NEA.
Praveen has worked with multiple clients to support them in the journey of wider ESG framework and disclosure to help meet SGX listing requirements. He has support multiple financial institutions to integrate environmental and climate risk as a part of their Enterprise Risk Management framework, helping them comply with MAS Environmental Risk Management Guidelines.
Praveen has also been awarded Enterprise Singapore Merit Award for his significant contribution in the space of sustainability.
Apart from his role in EY, Praveen has other areas of appointments, including: Member of the Expert Board Panel on Carbon Pricing for appeals at the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE); Member of National GHG and Product lifecycle workgroup at Enterprise Singapore; Member of National Green Finance at Enterprise Singapore.
Professor Roy Ling
Professor Roy Ling is the CEO & Founder of FollowTrade. Concurrently, he is also an Adjunct Professor in Finance at the SKEMA Business School, an Academic Programme Director at SMU Academy, and an Independent Board Director on several listed companies in Asia.
Prof. Ling is a seasoned veteran with more than 20 years in investment banking with JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Salomon Smith Barney. His expertise is in digital finance, sustainable investing, and Asia real estate, and he has completed some of the highest-profile advisory and capital market transactions in the region.
Prof. Ling is also a distinguished board director with more than 16 years of corporate governance experience across Asia. He was honoured as the Real Estate Executive of the Year 2016 by Singapore Business Review, and as one of 20 Rising Stars in Real Estate 2008 by Institutional Investor.
Prof. Ling graduated from INSEAD with a Global EMBA and from the National University of Singapore with a BBA (Hons).
About the Singapore Leaders Network
Supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the Singapore Leaders Network aspires to help advance the social capital of Singaporean corporate leaders who can support one another on their professional and personal leadership journeys - whilst cultivating a vibrant and robust community. This is achieved through large scale in-person events, smaller business networking sessions on various topics of interest, mentoring, as well as an online LinkedIn community.