Wong Mei Wai
Founder, CEO & Chief Change Advisor
APAC Global Advisory
Change Expertise in Strategy and Portfolio Brand Marketing
Mei Wai is a senior change marketing and business leader in the APAC marketing industry turned Entrepreneur - having taken leadership of iconic brands for global, regional and local corporates in diverse categories including personal care, food & beverages, luxury/ jewellery, hospitality, electrical, lighting and IT industry and banking for more than 2 decades. This include Unilever, Citibank, Fraser & Neave and family businesses like Heineken and Aspial. Her Global brand portfolio includes Unilever’s range of teas like Lipton, Personal Care like Sunsilk, Lux, Heineken and Citibank. Her specialty is in growing Asian brands having led Tiger Beer and the portfolio of regional Asia Pacific Breweries brands through their strongest growth, F&N brands and Aspial brands including Lee Hwa Jewellery. She has led the market and category entry, rejuvenation of brands, integration of brands for mergers & acquisition, stewardship of Global brands in leadership, challenger and/or " to be sold" positions.
Mei Wai is passionate in growing and turning around businesses and brands to take them to the next level. She has championed multiple strategic planning mid and long term roadmaps to define the next stage for the businesses, brands and categories including Fraser & Neave’s food business, Heineken’s largest Asian business in Vietnam.
Mei Wai also specialises in uplifting brands as well as business and capabilities for medium to large Business Families to grow their brands/ businesses within Asia– this includes introducing innovation, digital and ensuring that the change strategy and succession plan is in place to embed change.
Multi-Cultural and hands-on Business & Brand operational experience in Asia
Mei Wai has led significant operational teams locally in Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam – thus she is well placed to blend her strategic business capability and brand and multi-channel marketing with strong grounded operational hands-on leadership experience. Her leadership of multi-cultural teams in an array of locations and industries regionally (often in challenging emerging market environments) allows her to provide unique actionable insights and advice as well as being able to follow through recommendations with strong execution.
Mei Wai orchestrates, designs, appoints and collaborates with Insight, Creative, Media and Design agencies globally to create award-winning campaigns which provides the platform for her to select and put together optimal “fit for purpose” agency teams to co-create strategies and/or platforms for companies seeking to transform their marketing. As the Vice President of the Institute of Advertising Singapore, she passionately promotes and supports the creativity and innovation of the Singapore Marketing Communication industry.
Embedding Change through Talent, Family Business Succession planning and Coaching for Change
Mei Wai has always believed in delivering and embedding holistic and sustainable change through recruitment and appointment of strategic talent to make the quantum step forward for the organisations, having led multiple restructures or start-up structures of teams and executive coaching for change.
She is actively involved in Family Business Planning, helping them through change, succession planning and parallel business & family planning. As the few practical trained family advisor for Family Experts -Professor Randal and Keng Fun’s “ Family Business on the Moon”.
As an INSEAD Business School AMP Alumni (Fontainebleau, France) and being a participant in the INSEAD Business School Executive Masters in Change, Mei Wai brings hands-on clinical experience on driving Change across diverse organisations combining the latest industry knowledge, key thought leadership and psycho-analytics understanding in the change process.
She is currently also a global INSEAD Leadership Mentor for the INSEAD Business School for the Men & Women in Business inclusive of EMBA and MBA students and selected mentees.
Mei Wai has a BSc (Hon) Economics from University of Bristol, UK , MSc International Marketing from University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, EMBA from California University, the AMP and an Executive Masters in Change from INSEAD Business School.
Publication list
Wong, M. W. & Vongswasdi, P. (2024). Building Legacy through Brand Change: Insights from Multigenerational Family Businesses. Organizational Dynamics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0090261624000512
