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About The Event
In conjunction with International Women’s Week, SGLN partnered with Under Armour to host a panel discussion on cultural intelligence and cultivating a global mindset. We had the pleasure of having Chui Mei Foo, Nicole Ng and Dr. Catherine Peyrols Wu, share their business and academic experience on this topic. Our participants gleaned insights into how cultural intelligence and cross-cultural collaboration helps us success in global workforces, gained tips on how to adapt to working in new cultural environments and managing regional teams, as well as learntn how to strike a balance between localization and global ideas and the importance of diversity for high-performing teams.
Key Takeaways
1️⃣ Thriving in an intercultural setting requires building trust. One strategy of doing this is to schedule regular calls that focus on conversations beyond just work topics to actively engage team members in a personable way (e.g. taking the time to understand their personal stories, background).
2️⃣ To succeed in regional roles, it is essential to understand the market context you belong to. Take the time to seek out contextual insights and incorporate them into your decision-making processes when dealing with other (often global) stakeholders. Be an unassuming yet intentional advocate for the local/regional context.
3️⃣ When managing across global and/or regional priorities that may sometimes be conflicting or competing, reflect on how we can reframe our approach towards an enterprising mindset that focuses on collaboration. This will require an emphasis on shared purpose. One way this can be done is to regularly engage in team culture discussions every 3-4 months to understand how intercultural differences can be aligned for common business goals.
4️⃣ Whilst Singapore provides a holistic environment for growth, it remains crucial to step beyond our comfort zone and immerse ourselves in different cultures. It is important for us to remain curious, humble, yet adaptable in order to hone our cultural intelligence.
Key Moments
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, as well as an online LinkedIn community.
Featured Panellists
Dr. Catherine Peyrols Wu
Dr. Catherine Peyrols Wu is a teacher, coach, and cultural intelligence evangelist. She is currently a Lecturer in Cultural Intelligence and Global Leadership at the Nanyang Business School, and Director of Executive Programs at the Center for Leadership and Cultural Intelligence at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
A passionate advocate for cultural diversity, Dr. Catherine is currently working towards telling 1 million people about cultural intelligence through speaking, writing, and creating social media content. Since 2022, she is the co-host of The Cultural Quotient podcast where she discusses stories, tips, and strategies to foster cultural intelligence and harness the benefits of cultural diversity. As a speaker and facilitator, Dr. Catherine frequently facilitates workshops on cultural intelligence for multinational clients.
Dr. Catherine holds a PhD in Leadership and Cultural Intelligence from NTU. She is French and has lived in Asia for the past 18 years. Since 2009, she has made Singapore her home, where she is raising 3 third-culture kids with her Taiwanese American husband.
Nicole Ng
Nicole Ng is a marketer turned Product Growth Manager at Adobe, managing Free-to-Paid optimisation for DC Reader across the region.
She started her career in B2B marketing for Southeast Asia, before moving on to B2C digital marketing covering Asia Pacific. In her current role, she is passionate about driving culturalised digital experiences at scale for her customers.
A day-to-day practitioner of intercultural communication, she handles external vendors, internal stakeholders across geos, and believes there is plenty to learn from people all around the globe.
Chui Mei Foo
Chui Mei Foo is currently the Director of Retail for Under Armour South APAC. She has full P&L responsibility of both owned and operated stores, as well as the overseas shared services for Under Armour’s partners in the region.
Mei has nearly 30 years of general retail management in APAC. She started her retail career in operations with the travel retail industry, where she managed a wide spectrum of concessions ranging from wines, spirits and tobacco, luxury boutiques, and souvenirs, among others. Subsequently, she moved into the sporting goods industry to support businesses in L&D, retail development, visual merchandising and now P&L.
Mei is experienced in planning and executing “New to Market” concepts for various brands, ranging from a 200 sqm women’s only store to 3,500 sqm brand centre. She has also led turnkey retail management projects in China, improving standards and productivity for partner stores. Furthermore, Mei was part of the pioneering team in a startup that successfully launched a new brand in SEA, resulting in the company achieving the highest growth among SME companies in Singapore.