Career at the Table: Playing the Right Hand in an Ever-Changing Game

While I'm not a gambling man, looking back, my career has often felt like a game table—each move was not just a new job but a new game. The industry changed, expectations shifted, and the rules were often unwritten. But the one constant was the ability to read the game, adapt, and play the best hand possible.

Act 1: Learning the Game – Building Sales & Operations

My career began with a challenge: setting up a sales and operations office in Korea for an international relocation company. It wasn’t just about launching a business unit; it was about navigating new markets, building infrastructure, and aligning operations with commercial goals.

I learned early that success in any organisation isn’t just about individual performance—it’s about integrating strategy, execution, and stakeholder influence.

Act 2: Raising the Stakes – Managing Clients & Leading Service Operations

From there, I moved to Singapore and transitioned into account management, leading a cross-functional, customer-facing service operations team across multiple industries in Asia.

This was where I first experienced the complexity of scaling service excellence—balancing process optimisation, client expectations, and operational efficiency. I began to see that authentic leadership wasn’t just about managing people but about orchestrating outcomes across teams with different priorities.

Act 3: A New Table – Pivoting In-House at a Top-Tier Investment Bank

Then came a significant pivot—into an in-house HR consultant role at a top-tier investment bank in Hong Kong. The environment was different: structured, regulated, and high-stakes.

HR here wasn’t just about policies but risk mitigation, workforce strategy, and enabling high-performance cultures in a competitive global market. This shift reinforced the critical role HR plays in business resilience: aligning talent mobility, compliance, and organisational effectiveness to drive growth.

Act 4: Playing a Bigger Hand – Leading Bi-Regional Mobility for an Industrial Conglomerate

Next came the opportunity in Singapore to lead an industrial conglomerate's bi-regional global mobility function across Asia and Africa. The scale was different, and the complexity was greater—managing workforce transitions in the context of M&A, joint ventures, and market expansion.

At this level, mobility was no longer just about moving people—it was about moving the business forward. Success required anticipating global workforce trends, influencing C-suite decisions, and ensuring talent strategy aligned seamlessly with broader corporate objectives.

Act 5: The Wild Card – Establishing a Crisis Management Function at a Social Media Giant

Then came an unexpected shift: building a crisis management function at a social media giant. The pace was relentless, the challenges global, and the decisions often high-impact.

HR in this environment wasn’t about maintaining stability—it was about navigating disruption, designing resilience frameworks, and ensuring employees had the proper support at the right moments. It was a masterclass in agility, stakeholder management, and driving people strategy in an unpredictable world.

Act 6: Betting on Growth – Leading Regional HR for a Post-IPO MarTech Firm

I now lead the regional HR function in APAC for a fast-scaling MarTech firm after its IPO. In a high-growth, evolving environment, the challenge is not just keeping up but building ahead—ensuring that HR isn’t reactive but an enabler of expansion, culture, and long-term success.

This role has combined everything I’ve learned—balancing strategy with execution, structure with agility, and business needs with employee experience. It has reinforced my core belief that HR’s role is not just to support growth but to architect it.

Final Act: What Game Are You Playing?

HR leadership, like a well-played hand, involves knowing when to adapt, when to push forward, and when to rethink the game entirely.

The best HR leaders aren’t just playing one game—they’re learning the rules of new ones, anticipating shifts, and ensuring that people strategy is aligned with the business and driving it forward.

So, what’s been the most significant career ‘game change’ for you? How did you adapt? I’d love to hear your story.