Ten chapters.
One ongoing story.

I nearly became a flight steward with Singapore Airlines, but chose to forgo the final interview and join Fuji Xerox on Kara’s recommendation. From 2006 to 2007, I mastered my sales skills and hit my target every month. In August 2007, after a year selling copiers, I joined DHL Express to expand from selling hardware to selling delivery services. Looking back, Kara’s belief in me led to one of the best career decisions I made.

On 4 March 2011, my regional role at DHL was confirmed by phone. A few hours later, my daughter was born. Darren Plested promoted me at 27, opened the door to Beijing and entrusted me with aerospace vertical development. His lesson on understanding agreement terms and conditions became more meaningful as my career progressed.

In 2012, we moved from Singapore to Beijing. My wife left her full-time role at Philips, trusting our new chapter together. Our second child was born at Beijing United on 1 October 2012. In November 2013, a European role took us to Bonn, with hope and ambition for the future.

Beginning in November 2013, a difficult customer relationship led to an 18-hour meeting and an agreement to terminate the business relationship. With my wife’s support and God’s grace, I invested time in understanding the operational issues. Over 18 months, the business grew from EUR 18 million to EUR 52 million and overall profitability improved from −25% to +20%.

The opportunity was light assembly of Huawei 4G base stations in Budapest. Despite scepticism, I kept the business discussions moving until the site was developed. We began with 3–4 base stations and started to scale after six months, broadening DHL’s capabilities in Hungary.

Four co-founders brought experience in life sciences, technology and tender management to the idea of an Airbnb for warehouse space. With support from a DPDHL corporate sponsor, our pitch and credibility secured EUR 250,000 in funding, despite competing with a more established project that already had $1.5 million invested.

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In 2019, I left DHL to join Charles Cao at ECMS Express. With Wang JiaLiang, I helped turn customised services into ESE, a standardised delivery service product. I later learned I was the third person to attempt this capability. The credibility earned led to a US General Manager role, where I improved the P&L over 18 months.

After completing the founder’s project, I sought his blessing to return to an MNC. We returned to Singapore in July 2023 so our children could experience life as Singaporeans. Christian took on the PSLE challenge after joining the second half of Primary 5. Yvonne Tang welcomed me to Maersk in Regional Program Management, with the opportunity to learn ocean operations.

Returning to an MNC opened a new chapter in my leadership journey and an opportunity to deepen my understanding of ocean operations. If you would like to hear more about my Maersk chapter, you are welcome to send me a private message.

From Fuji Xerox in 2006 to DHL Express, DHL Customer Solutions & Innovations, ECMS Express and Maersk, my career has combined commercial strategy, P&L leadership, program management, product development, operational turnarounds and executive stakeholder engagement. I have led teams of 60+ FTEs at ECMS US and currently lead 20 colleagues at Maersk, with a USD 430 million logistics portfolio excluding Ocean. My industry experience spans technology, aerospace and aviation, engineering and manufacturing, FMCG, chemicals, eCommerce, lifestyle and retail. Working with multicultural and remote teams across borders has shaped my leadership. Seven relocations since Beijing have been part of that journey. Highlights include growing the EMEA portfolio from EUR 18 million to EUR 52 million, growing the global account from EUR 197 million to EUR 230 million, and co-founding Big Yellow Storage, one of six DPDHL incubation projects selected from 250 applications. I also helped the ECMS Founder deliver the ESE global corporate-wide transformation in 2020, creating a standardised global delivery product. At DHL in 2014, I secured and implemented Huawei 4G base-station light assembly in Budapest, building the operation and scaling after six months.