In 1999, Jennie Chua was named Woman of the Year. She had been president and chief operating officer of Raffles International since October 1998, and she was already closely identified with Raffles Hotel, which she had run as general manager since 1990. The profile written that year asked what made her tick, and the answer lay in her humour, her common sense and a childhood that taught her to keep moving.
Presence in the room
The profile opened with a small scene. A hotel doorman who had been slow to find a cab sprang into action the moment the general manager stepped out of a car. The point was her presence: she was small in stature, and colleagues said that when she spoke, a room turned to listen and laughter tended to follow.
That presence came with results. By 1999 she was a director of 29 companies and sat on 11 government and community committees. She was also the first woman elected to the board of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce in its 161-year history.
The story also noted an irony. Her Hainanese grandfather had supplied curry to the hotel’s Tiffin Room decades earlier, in an era when a woman of Asian descent might not have been welcome through its doors, let alone at its head. She said she would have persuaded rather than confronted.
Humour, judgement and persuasion
Friends said her gift was common sense. She believed every problem had a solution, even if it was only a so-so one that let everyone move on. Colleagues said she would lay out three or four options and leave the choice to you.
Humour was her other tool. She used jokes to put problems in perspective, and those around her described a warmth that made powerful people feel at ease.
Her fundraising method rested on psychology. She studied what a potential donor cared about before asking: she would not request a university endowment from a man who thought education was the government’s job, but she might suggest an art lover buy a major painting for the museum. The general manager of the Singapore Repertory Theatre credited her with bringing in millions of dollars for the company over six years.
A childhood that taught her to go forward
At ten, she said, she woke to find her bed being carried out: the family had lost its money, and the house and its contents were auctioned to pay debts. Having always been chauffeured, she and her mother then had to learn everyday tasks, from paying the utility bill to crossing a busy road. She recalled being stranded mid-road and crying until a stranger led them across. The lesson she took from it was that you can stay stuck or go forward, and she chose to go forward.
The rules of Miss Chua
Staff called her strict but clear. Three rules came up:
- Arrive with your thoughts in order. A memo that simply said “Please speak” meant you should rehearse the questions she was likely to ask.
- Report problems immediately. She would help solve them, but she did not forgive being kept in the dark.
- Uphold high standards, including decorum on an overseas trip.
She also admitted she had mellowed. By 1999 she had cut her work week from seven days to six and was aiming for slightly less. Her stated ambition was modest: to dine at fine restaurants and choose her holidays, a contrast with her schooldays, when she could afford either fishball noodles or the bus fare, but not both.
Milestones before 1999
She started as a teacher in 1963, then studied at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. She returned to Singapore in 1971 and worked across housekeeping, food and beverage, and marketing. In 1977 she took over the Singapore Convention Bureau, and in 1984 she received the National Day Public Service Silver Medal for her work on the convention industry. After joining Westin in 1988, she moved to Raffles Hotel in 1990. She won Independent Hotelier of the World from Hotels magazine in 1997 and TravelAsia’s Hotelier of the Year in 1999.
What came next
The Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame records that she was the first Singaporean and the first woman to be general manager of Raffles Hotel. In April 2001 she led Raffles into acquiring Swissôtel, which Bloomberg said turned an Asia-centred company into a global one. She became president and CEO of Raffles Holdings in April 2003 and held the post until January 2007.
In August 2007 she became chief executive of The Ascott Group, part of CapitaLand. In 2009 she became CapitaLand’s chief corporate officer, and she retired from the group in 2012. In May 2009 she also took the chair of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, the body whose board she had joined as its first woman a decade earlier. The Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame counts her among its inductees.