Chit-chat: Dr John Vong
Jun 16th, 2009 by Steven
Last week, I met up with John Vong PhD, a long-time acquaintance whom I have not met for donkey’s years. We did keep in touch via the occasional emails. He was based in various countries on job assignments. At one time, he emailed from Timor-Leste, which became the world’s newest independent state in May 2002, after 450 years of foreign occupation. John, then a consultant with the UNDP, facilitated the Organizational Restructuring at the Office of the East Timor Parliament.
John is now based in Vietnam as Senior Resident Adviser of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC). About 2 years ago he was seconded to the Saigon Thuong Tin Bank (or Sacombank, of which IFC is a shareholder) and serves as its Deputy CEO. His CV states that “his core competence is in capacity building especially in the areas of financial information systems, financial governance, HR development, performance audit and organizational development”. Prior to his IFC-World Bank appointment, John served as UNDP’s Resident Technical Adviser on public administration reform for the Vietnamese Government.
I first got to know John in the mid-1990s; he was then the Director for MBA (Banking & Finance) at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. I knew little about his background until our recent meeting.
While John was sipping cups of Lipton tea (and sky juice for me), I got to know that he didn’t start out in the banking world. He was a copywriter with Ogilvy & Mather in London. Yes, John had worked with the legend himself, David Ogilvy. In early 1980s he joined HSBC Bank where he stayed for 15 years, with postings in Australia, Hong Kong and Malaysia. The bank sponsored his PhD study at the University of Bradford, where he completed his thesis on Bank MIS in 1992.
In 2005, HRM Singapore honoured him with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the field of HR and leadership development. John is a prolific writer too, with 20 major publications on banking, finance, IT and international business to his credit.
A Malaysian by birth, John’s family home is now in Melbourne
Till we meet again …