“When I got the result, I went home, covered myself with a blanket and cried. I didn’t know what to do,” recalls the alumnus of Thomson Secondary School, which was later renamed North Vista Secondary School.
It was a big setback for the then 16-year-old, but she refused to let failure define her.
The one-time vegetable seller is now DBS Bank’s regional head of technology for the Institutional Banking Group and looks after about 1,000 staff globally.
She steered the launch of cross-border PayNow initiatives that allow Singaporeans to pay for purchases in Thailand, India and, soon, Malaysia.
She is also heavily involved in DBS’ ongoing initiative to strengthen its technology resiliency, which aims to provide a higher degree of “service availability” of key services to customers.
And she did all this without a degree.
Speaking to The Straits Times at 7.30am on a Friday because of her packed schedule, the 52-year-old is jovial and energetic despite the early hour.
Her late father, a Republic of Singapore Navy regular who was educated up to Secondary 2, was the family’s sole breadwinner. Her illiterate housewife mother would supplement the family’s income by taking on home-based jobs, such as sewing or fixing broken toys.
Ms Ang, a middle child with two siblings, started doing part-time jobs from Primary 4, earning $2 a day running errands and packing goods for a neighbourhood bookstore.
She took Chinese as a first language in Peiying Primary School for about 18 months until her parents moved to a three-room flat in Ang Mo Kio. She then switched to Jing Shan Primary School, where English was the first language.
But because her family spoke Teochew and Mandarin at home, she could not catch up and struggled up till secondary school.
Her natural talent leaned towards mathematics and accounting. In her teens, she took apart her family’s fridge to find out the source of the sound emanating from it. Panic set in when she could not get it to work again.
“I was afraid my mum would scold me, so I told her the fridge was spoiled,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve liked to solve puzzles and problems from a young age.”
Ms Ang Li Khim working overnight with her team members to run system upgrading as part of DBS’ technology resiliency uplift programme. PHOTO: DBS
Her D7 fail grade in English left her at a crossroads. “I was quite lost. All my friends advanced their studies, and I was left behind,” she says.
Not wanting to redo her Secondary 4 year in school, she became a manufacturing operator for about a year while waiting to resit her O-level English exam, which was held annually.
She needed the money for night school fees of around $200 a month, knowing that her father’s salary of about $800 a month was barely enough for the family’s basic expenses.
When she failed the English exam yet again, she worked at her aunt and uncle’s vegetable stall at a wet market. That job gave her time to attend night school to obtain diplomas in computing and accounting over the next two years as she worked out what career she wanted to pursue.
In all, she took the O-level English exam four times over six years before finally scoring a C6 pass in 1993.
The previous year, she had graduated with diplomas in management accounting from a private school and computer studies from the former Informatics Education group. She reckons that because her diploma classes and assignments were in English, they boosted her fluency and helped her pass.
Along the way, she also worked as a data entry clerk at an aerospace engineering firm, translating physical asset registries into computerised ones, before landing a job as a contract programmer at National Computer Board in 1992.
She later obtained professional certifications from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT based in Britain.
In 1996, she joined Standard Chartered Bank in a system support role. During her 17-year career there, she was posted to its China office to run its country technology department for four years from 2009.
She returned to Singapore in 2013 to take care of her ailing father, who died three years later. The singleton also joined DBS as a vice-president in 2013. She was promoted to senior vice-president by 2016, executive director in 2019 and managing director by 2021.
Not having a degree has not affected her prospects, she feels. “When you love your job, you will be given the opportunity to prove yourself and advance in your career.”
She says she has made the most of each job she had by finding new ways to motivate herself.
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As a data entry clerk, she set targets on how many pages she would finish a day. When she hawked vegetables, she prioritised sales of highly perishable bundles of spinach and kang kong to avoid having to pack them in ice for the next day.
She thinks her “never say die” attitude and “can-do spirit” made her stand out in a sea of degree-holders eager to fill her shoes.
“If you believe in yourself and you have what it takes to succeed, people’s perceptions of you as a non-graduate don’t matter,” says Ms Ang, who does not rule out doing a degree after retirement, just for the experience.
Her persevering nature has not gone unnoticed. Ms Ang was featured in Singapore Computer Society’s Singapore 100 Women in Tech 2023 list. The annual accolade is a partnership between the society, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and SG Women In Tech, an IMDA initiative.
Over the last three decades, she has seen Singapore’s computerisation and digitalisation journey up close, first as a blue-collar worker and then as a technology leader. It has taught her that every role, no matter how small, is important.
“You need everybody to play their part to get things done. Not everyone’s pace is the same, but give them space. People will do good when they’re in the right place,” she says.
The pandemic hastened digitalisation and people’s expectations have now changed, she says. More people are using their smartphones as cashless wallets and digital payments are now a part of daily life, from paying for kaya toast in the morning to using a ride-hailing app at the end of the day.
“Technology is just like water and electricity. It has to be there,” she says.
“What we want is to provide a stable and resilient environment, so that people don’t get caught in situations where they’re not able to execute a task or fulfil their wants.”
This means she often pulls long hours and is on-call for system maintenance on weekends. But she says: “It makes the job more fulfilling because you’re impacting people’s lives.”
At the same time, she recognises that seniors, like her 75-year-old mother, are often intimidated by the dizzying speed of change. Because her mother cannot read, she would memorise the sequence of screens to withdraw money at the automated teller machines, only to be caught out when the screens change and have her ATM card forfeited.
“When I look at her, I feel that for the elderly, we really need time and patience to help them embrace technology,” she says.
Ms Ang, seen here during a trip to Iceland in 2012, de-stresses from her fast-paced job by taking holidays. PHOTO: COURTESY OF ANG LI KHIM
Ms Ang, who de-stresses by playing the Pokemon app and visiting exotic destinations from Iceland to Tibet once or twice a year, thrives on the fast pace of her industry.
“In the technology world, no problem is repeated. It’s always a new problem that you have to use your experience to solve,” she says, adding that she is excited to explore how new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can help.
She hopes her story will help those in despair because they cannot excel academically.
“It’s never the end of the world. Nobody gave me that advice back then, so I was very lost. So, I tell the youngsters that there are always other ways to do what you want and get what you need.”
This is the first of a limited series on inspiring women.
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