Jene Lim

Jene Lim knew from an early age that she wanted to run her own business one day. As a student, she gravitated toward leadership roles, spending much of her time in student council, sports teams, and school projects. She enjoyed bringing people together and making things happen.

At the same time, she watched people around her borrow money from family and friends to start businesses, only to see many of those ventures fail. It convinced her that before becoming an entrepreneur, she first needed to understand how businesses actually worked.

Her first taste of corporate life came through a two-month internship at Deloitte. It did not take long for her to realize that auditing was not for her. The work revolved around checking records and making sure nothing went wrong. There was little room to create, build, or influence outcomes.

After graduation, she joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), working on securities and futures regulation. The role gave her exposure to senior executives and major financial institutions, but after several months, she realized that regulatory work was, in many ways, another version of auditing. Once again, she found herself reviewing rather than building.

She decided to move on.

That decision led her to Citibank's Management Associate Program, a three-year rotation that would shape the next thirteen years of her career. The program exposed her to compliance, finance, mortgages, and SME banking. Initially, she was assigned to compliance and finance because of her accounting background and experience at MAS, but her career took an unexpected turn when she landed in mortgage banking.

At the time, mortgages were not considered glamorous. Most management associates wanted investment banking or trading roles. Jene accepted the assignment anyway.

The timing turned out to be perfect.

Singapore's property market was booming in 2005. Buyers crowded showrooms without knowing whether they qualified for financing. Jene and her team saw an opportunity. Long before smartphones and mobile apps became part of everyday life, they built a digital in-principle approval system that could instantly assess whether a customer qualified for a mortgage.

The challenge was enormous. Mortgage applications contained hundreds of data points. The team had to simplify underwriting rules, redesign the customer journey, and build a wireless solution that could work inside property showrooms.

Jene immersed herself in every aspect of the project. She learned product development, technology implementation, marketing, and event management, often staying in the office until midnight. When the product launched, it became Citi's first instant mortgage approval solution globally.

The project changed the direction of her career.

For the first time, she discovered product management—a profession she had never heard of before joining the bank. She realized that product managers sat at the intersection of technology, business, and customer experience. It was exactly where she wanted to be.

Over the next decade, she committed herself to product management.

Citibank gave young employees opportunities that many organizations would have reserved for more senior leaders. Within a few years, Jene was managing teams and overseeing increasingly complex portfolios. In 2008, shortly after getting married, she relocated to Hong Kong to become a credit card product manager.

The move coincided with the global financial crisis.

As the newest member of the team, she worried that she would be among the first to leave during the layoffs. She survived the cuts and spent two years in Hong Kong, gaining regional experience and learning how to operate in uncertain conditions.

When she returned to Singapore, she took on larger leadership responsibilities in mortgage and home financing. Her role expanded beyond product management into marketing, partnerships, and customer acquisition. She eventually moved into regional roles covering eight markets across Asia.

By then, another thought had started to form in her mind.

After more than a decade at Citi, she worried about being pigeonholed. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be for others to see her beyond mortgage banking. Long before she was ready to leave, she started updating her LinkedIn profile, refining her personal brand, and speaking with recruiters.

That preparation paid off.

After thirteen years at Citi, she joined Experian.

The move brought together many of the skills she had accumulated throughout her career. Product management, digital transformation, credit analytics, compliance, and banking operations suddenly became relevant again.

At Experian, she helped launch instant company account-opening solutions using ACRA data, built international credit-reporting capabilities, and led the development of cloud-based platforms connecting businesses across borders. One of the company's most ambitious projects involved building Singapore's buy-now-pay-later infrastructure in just six months.

Today, she oversees both product and operational teams across Singapore and Malaysia, leading more than thirty people.

The biggest lesson she learned after moving to Experian had little to do with technology.

At Citi, she believed that hard work alone would be enough. At Experian, she realized that visibility mattered just as much. Networking, relationship-building, and contributing outside the office became a deliberate part of her growth strategy.

That realization led her to SGTech, where she joined the Digital Trust Committee and later took on leadership responsibilities. Working alongside leaders from technology companies, law firms, and consulting firms, she became increasingly involved in conversations around artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital trust, and sustainability.

More recently, Jene has also started exploring board opportunities. In 2024, she completed the Women in Tech Board Readiness track under the Singapore Institute of Directors' Board Readiness Program, a ten-month program designed to prepare senior executives for board roles through training, mentorship, and board simulations.

For Jene, board work represents a natural extension of what has always motivated her: helping organizations navigate change, connecting technology with business strategy, and contributing beyond her day-to-day responsibilities.

Looking back, her career has never followed a master plan. She stumbled into product management, switched industries several times, and discovered new interests along the way.

The principle that has remained constant is simple: own your career.

No manager, recruiter, or HR department will chart the path for you. Start before you need to. Build your network early. Stay curious. Keep learning.

Even the jobs you dislike may turn out to be useful ten years later.