Lena Goh
lena-goh-2024-influence-100

Lena Goh

MD Public Affairs
Temasek
Singapore

 

Lena Goh joined Temasek in 2017 as public affairs director, after serving for three years as chief marketing and communications officer for GovTech Singapore, which successfully repositioned the island state around the idea of being a ‘Smart Nation’, by driving digital transformation of government ICT solutions and providing better digital services to citizens and businesses. As such, Goh has plenty of experience when it comes to driving transformational change, skills that she honed during her previous corporate stints leading communications at Microsoft and Motorola. 

At Temasek, Goh was promoted to the top communications role in 2023, before winning the Individual Achievement SABRE later that year. She oversees brand communications, media and issues management, and reputation management for the Singapore investment company.

Can you share a moment in your career when you saw PR's direct impact on business performance?
About two decades ago when the penetration of mobile phones was still nascent, I had the opportunity in one of my past jobs to work with GSMA to advocate and bring in low-cost handphones to emerging markets. We wrote and publicised the paper ‘Connecting the next billion’, which helped to bring the telco operators and handphone manufacturers together to help lower the cost of mobile phones and increase the adoption rate into emerging markets across LatAm, Africa, China and Southeast Asia. This helped to provide a knock-on economic impact that benefited the underserved and low income communities of farmers and blue-collar workers. That project greatly inspired me. I will continue to do my part by using PR as the conduit to add business value as it can then help improve peoples' lives and livelihoods.

What are the communications industry's biggest challenges and opportunities in the year ahead?
With the advent of AI, it will disrupt many jobs – but importantly it will also help to provide many new higher value work. Our fellow practitioners will need to upskill and pivot, and get comfortable with leveraging on AI tools and applications to help them with building their insights pre-emptively. This will in turn help the PR industry to add more business value to their organisations.

What have you most admired about the communications industry over the past year?
Post-Covid most of us had to struggle with the new hybrid work model, where work and play is blended rather than binary. The communications industry has been highly nimble and many of us have continued to thrive and grow amidst the many crises everyone has to deal with. This can only be achieved because we have an agile and resilient mindset, and also an optimistic outlook that we can continue to refine and further our craft to help improve the world with better communications.

What work from your team are you most proud of over the past year?
We commemorated our 50th anniversary this year and we have rolled out a series of human-angled stories to share more about what we do publicly. It is in our DNA to not just do well with our financial investments, but importantly to do right and do good for the communities that we operate in too. We paid tribute to our past generation of leaders and colleagues that helped to build a strong foundation for our organisation today and also highlighted how we continue to invest with tomorrow in mind, so every generation prospers. Our series of content helped to humanise our company and profiled our staff, alumni and even beneficiaries that have journeyed with us through the decades.

How have you switched off from work and maintained wellness over the past year?
Spending time with my family and also practising yoga/pilates whenever I can.

Which book/movie/TV show/podcast/playlist/other cultural source has helped you get through the past year or provided inspiration?
Its more the values that I have been brought up with. To always give thanks for what I have and to be humble and kind to others.

If I wasn't working in marketing/communications, I would be...
In a business centric role.