18 | theceomagazine.com
The family
business
Aurum Land’s Director Michelle Yong never planned to join
her family’s property development business, but it’s a good
thing she did, as it’s thriving under her watch.WORDS SHARON MASIGE • IMAGES YEW KWANGO
nly three per cent of family
businesses are expected to
survive into the fourth
generation. For Michelle
Yong – the fourth
generation of her family’s
construction company, Woh Hup Holdings – she
never expected she’d ever take on a directorship
role. However, fate had a different idea. “From a
very young age, my brother was always groomed
to take over the family business,” Michelle tells
The CEO Magazine. “I grew up thinking he
would be the one to join the company and that
I’d take a different path and chase my own goals.
“I worked in academia for a little while,
consulting with a private sector think tank for
the UK government, and then I did a stint in
management consulting.”
She fondly recalls the two years she spent
working as a management consultant as a “rich
period” of her life when she got to meet many
interesting people. However, she soon found it
unsatisfactory. “It wasn’t sustainable,” she says.
“There were weeks where I did 18-hour days.
So I got a bit disillusioned with that industrybecause a lot of it was up in the air and
I wasn’t creating anything tangible.”
Michelle did eventually end up joining
the family business; however, it sadly happened
under less than ideal circumstances. “My uncle,
who was running one of our subsidiaries,
Aurum Land, passed away unexpectedly.
He was only 40 years old and had a stroke.
The timing was right for me personally;
I was looking for a change, so when I was
approached by the family and asked to take
over that business, I said yes.”
Michelle was at a point in her life where
she was looking for something new. “I wanted
to be able to make a difference. I felt like I had
gained enough experience outside the family
business to vouch for myself professionally, so
I was ready to give it a try. The offer was to
take over the business, make it my own, and try
to turn it around because, at the time, Aurum
Land was quite small and not as profitable as it
could be. It just made sense for me to accept,”
she says.
As the director of Aurum Land,
Michelle oversees the operations of the »INSPIRE | Interview