What I have lived.

To deepen my sustainability capabilities, I sought to understand global ESG ratings from within the rating process itself. I partnered with Malaysia’s largest automotive group for a year, working directly with a leading international rating agency to analyse and strengthen the group’s ESG standing. I was appointed sustainability consultant to manage ESG data, support reporting and coordinate ISAE 3000 assurance alongside a global climate specialist, giving me hands-on exposure to the intersection of disclosure standards, data discipline and external verification.

The engagement expanded into shaping the group’s transition strategy for green mobility and a green hydrogen industrial park, involving global equipment, infrastructure and banking partners. It also positioned the group as an early adopter of Bursa Malaysia’s Centralised Sustainability Intelligence System. The experience offered an uncommon vantage point across ESG ratings, assurance and industrial transition — an integrated view that continues to anchor my work in sustainability.

During the Covid-19 period, I anticipated rising underemployment and a longer-term shift toward project-based, function-specific work — a trend now accelerating with AI-driven redundancies. To prepare for this transition, I developed a blockchain-based Work-Fi concept called the Work Interchange Token (WIT), designed to scale the Risk–Innovation–Culture framework through a fractional workforce rather than traditional mass employment. The aim was to create a decentralised labour model capable of absorbing underutilised talent, deploying expertise dynamically and strengthening national productivity.

WIT operates on a private-chain DAO that converts time and contribution into structured digital value. Its dual-unit model distinguishes billable work from the value created by completed projects, allowing contributors to earn immediately while sharing in longer-term sustainability outcomes. Collaborative groups are organised as green cooperatives, enabling distributed talent to participate in impact-linked economic returns without relying on conventional organisational structures.

A major ramp collapse on one of Southeast Asia’s largest infrastructure projects — traced to failures in formwork supervision — exposed structural gaps in its risk-management approach. The client sought a reset, and through a state affiliate, CEOPE was recommended to the company under the Ministry of Finance. Over a three-year tenure, we strengthened project-wide risk practices, improved assurance routines and supported decision-making discipline across contractors and work packages. The remaining phases were completed safely, ahead of schedule and without further serious incidents, underscoring the value of consistent governance in large, complex builds.

The project also raised a broader question: how could mega-infrastructure enhance asset productivity and stimulate surrounding socioeconomic activity? This led me to explore community-centred innovation and placemaking through the fine arts, using cultural symbolism to shape how communities gather, participate and create value. Over a year, I interviewed more than 300 stakeholders and curated the two-day National Arts Symposium featuring 24 profession-based forums. That work led to my appointment to the National Arts Development Board — a role I accepted briefly before stepping aside for long-waiting practitioners within the arts community.

After ERMA, I turned my attention to West Malaysia’s water sector, but the industry was entering a prolonged restructuring cycle: PAAB as the new asset owner, SPAN as regulator, and state and private operators still settling into their roles. With the landscape unlikely to stabilise quickly, I shifted toward state-owned Bumiputera enterprises, hoping to replicate the ERM technology implementation in other sectors. The appetite, however, was different. Sarawak had embraced ERM and sustainability much earlier — a pattern that remains visible today as it positions itself for large-scale green development. Even so, I secured two ERM mandates with Selangor state entities, one assessing maturity and another building ERM infrastructure, and was later brought in to help neutralise risks surrounding a port-area land matter involving both state and federal interests.

Around the same period, I sought capital-market exposure and became involved in an oil-and-gas SPAC IPO, engaging prospective investors and emerging as the largest individual fund-raiser for its RM100 million CRPS exercise. In parallel, I began collaborating with Design Thinking and TRIZ communities, exploring how structured innovation could deepen and complement ERM.

My early interest in automated consulting led me to imagine a diagnostic-and-recommendation engine for enterprises. Conversations with an MIT-trained professor introduced me to symbolic AI — at a time when neural networks and LLMs were still emerging — and to cybernetics, whose principles aligned naturally with enterprise risk management. ERM began to appear less like a reporting function and more like a decision system: uncertainty mathematics to identify issues, supported by a structured knowledge base to suggest remedies. The possibilities in technology felt far more compelling than traditional advisory work.

That pull toward building tools sharpened my direction. The opportunity came through ERMA, an enterprise risk application development project initiated by an East Malaysian minister and co-financed jointly by the State and my consulting practice. It was a lean, under-resourced build, but the challenge made it worthwhile. Modest by global standards yet unprecedented locally, it became Malaysia’s first serious attempt at an AI-oriented enterprise risk platform. We deployed it for a Sarawak state water utility — already regarded as a national benchmark for sustainability — embedding ISO 31000 concepts, Bayesian probabilities and Cochran sampling updates. Over 1.5 years, a seven-person Java team delivered more than two million lines of code, and ERMA went on to be shortlisted as a Top 5 Asia Pacific ICT Awards finalist in two categories.

The rigour of our internal audit work — and the depth of our process insight — eventually led one client to convert our engagement into a consulting mandate. I became the de facto CFO for a Tier-1 automotive manufacturing PLC within the national automotive ecosystem. Over a two-year period, I worked through supply-chain cashflows, introduced standard costing, strengthened governance structures and helped stabilise stakeholder confidence. While my IA firm continued supporting other clients, this role brought me closer to the operational centre of an organisation and showed what it meant to influence decisions from within. It marked the beginning of my shift from assurance to consulting — the other side of the governance fence.

The experience also affirmed that structured process frameworks, such as APQC’s Process Classification Framework, could materially improve enterprise performance when applied on the ground. It was where I learned to translate consulting knowledge into lived operational practice — moving from describing systems to carrying responsibility for them. That period also sparked early ideas about what an AI-based enterprise diagnostic could one day become: a digital advisor that could surface insights and guide improvements with speed and consistency.

After leaving Andersen, I helped pioneer one of Southeast Asia’s first IA-only professional services practices in 1997, at age 25 and in collaboration with IIA Malaysia during the Asian Financial Crisis. The aim was straightforward: support PLCs in understanding risk from within their governance systems, not merely through external reporting. Malaysia was cautious with new methods, yet our first major client was a US-based pharmaceutical group that entrusted us with regional IA outsourcing across Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia. That early vote of confidence from an advanced-economy multinational contrasted with domestic hesitation — a pattern in which Malaysia often waited for external validation before embracing its own capabilities. Still, CEOPE grew into one of the region’s leading IA service providers after the millennium, delivering quarter-on-quarter internal audits for more than 20 PLCs at any point over the next decade.

GBP, however, remained with Andersen. I explored whether a national body like ISIS could license it to support the Knowledge Economy agenda and accelerate enterprise-process literacy across Corporate Malaysia, but the institutional climate was cautious with ideas of that scale. Instead, I adopted APQC’s Universal Process Classification Framework — created by the same organisation behind GBP — and applied its public protocol as a practical scaffold for evaluating internal controls and governance maturity. It offered enough structure for clients seeking clearer insight into their business processes. It found traction — a sign that organisations were ready for structured improvement, even if they preferred a more incremental pathway rather than a full leap to the global benchmark.

I began my career in Arthur Andersen’s Financial Services Audit & Business Advisory Division, working across insurers, banks, brokerages and exchanges. Specialising in general insurance audits led to my role on the firm’s first major internal audit project for a large insurance PLC, giving me early exposure to Global Best Practices, full IA infrastructure design and the introduction of the risk heat map. It became a formative milestone, and our project team received three of the four divisional double promotions that year.

Pairing best-practice recommendations with IA findings felt game-changing: they offered clarity, new insights and confidence for cautious corporate executives to implement changes and advance thought leadership. But the firm — like many of its clients — took a conservative stance to maintain what felt safe for its assurance business. The broader institutional mood was similar. At the same time, national conversations on the Knowledge Economy were emerging, echoing the direction I believed Malaysia needed to take. By 1997, it was clear that the impact I hoped to make would not fit within traditional audit rhythms, and that was when I knew I had to chart a path of my own.