My Mentor: Christine Ng

My mentor, Christine Ng, has changed the way I look at things ever since I worked in Komag (now Western Digital Media). She has many qualities of leader, manager and strategist. I always think that she can contribute more than what she is doing now as Training manager.

Why is she so special to me? What I am today in Trainign and Development and OD field is largely due to her effort in grooming me in the last seven years (1995-2002). Because of her encouragement, I can lead a team in an organization to transform its manufacturing practices, culture and competency development.

On personal note, she has influenced me a lot. She has shown us how to be a manager, how to plan, how to contribute to local community, how to performance and people focuses, and how to think like a CEO. Because of her, I am able to work with Pfizer as Training Manager (Malaysia and Singapore) and as Senior Training Manager in Carsem. I am not trying to blow my own trumpet. It is more to show you how good a manager she is to us.

The following is what I know of her:

a. Singapore Board of Economic: She has worked woth Singapore Board of Economic for 7 years as Corporate Planning Managers (1987-1996?). The body has successfully atratced billions of dollar of foreign investors for Singapore.

b. Industry Experience: Her industry exposure in Penang manufacturing sector. She has been with Komag (now WDM) for the last 10 years (1996-2008). While she was workng there as Senior Training manager, she demonstrated the high quality of work standard and leadership.

c. Leadership Quality: She won the Best Female Manager of Malaysia in 2000. She has led the our team where I am one of her staff from strength to strength. Under her coaching, strength based management, and insight of human resource development, we have helped the organization, Komag, to retain many talented employees. She has groomed us to be the future leaders. Today, Ruzi is the Motorola Country Training Manager and I am the Senior Training Manager for Carsem Malaysia Sdn Bhd ( I manage 100 staff in a 10000 employees' factory in Ipoh. It is a top 10 world largest IC assembly and test company).

d. Expertise in Human Resource Development and Planning: She integrated Training and Development with Organization development. The integration of both approaches have made the training department to be performance-focused. Her insight about organization, employee development, corporate planning and human behaviors are ten years ahead of Malaysian standard. She is a trun believer of learning organization (Peter Senge) and organization strategy (Gary Hammer).

If I were the CEO of a company, I would immediately engage her as my senior director in strategy and planning development, and human capital development.