“People call me the storyteller,” says Lim Ming Pey, who joined Temasek as an investment officer in 1999.

One of the company’s first hires under its fledgling scholarship programme, she knew very little about what Temasek did back then. “There was no Temasek Review and no social media. But the stories I heard from my bosses helped me understand how Temasek came into being, and why we do things the way we do,” says the 46-year-old, who now double-hats as Deputy Head of the company’s Organisation & People (O&P) team and Managing Director of the Strategy Office.

“I understand the heritage that we have to carry forward, so those are the stories I now tell.”

Crafting a narrative

Ming Pey was employee no.86 when she graduated and settled in at her desk on the 39th floor of the then-Temasek Tower in Shenton Way. “It was a small office because we were a small company, but we had a beautiful view of Tanjong Pagar port,” she recalls.

“I remember one of our bosses explaining that if the cranes in the port were down and looked like dinosaurs, it meant containers were being unloaded and Singapore was doing well. But if the cranes were upright, like giraffes, then the market was not as active as it should be. We learnt to gauge how Singapore was doing by looking out of the window,” she laughs.

At the time, Temasek was not yet actively pursuing investments. “The Temasek I joined was very focused on corporate governance,” she says. “The work was largely around corporatising or setting up the governance structures of the Singapore-based companies in our portfolio. Some companies, like Singtel, were looking to list.” She, herself, was assigned to Private Equity Funds Investment (PEFI), one of Temasek’s first investment teams.

“There were just six of us, and everyone attended all the meetings. Junior members like me could listen in when our bosses talked about strategies and partner dynamics, and we learnt from the best.” As Temasek became an active investor, first regionally and then globally, the team was responsible for introducing Temasek to the outside world. “We had to go out there to these global funds and explain who we were, what we did, and the connections we could help them make,” she says. “If people didn't know anything about you, why would they do business with you? How could they trust you?”

Over time, the company’s external narrative matured, taking shape in the first Temasek Review – a public report of its portfolio performance – published in 2004. The same year, Temasek earned triple-A credit ratings from S&P and Moody’s for the quality of its portfolio.

“To me, that made it real,” says Ming Pey. “I’d spent years explaining our commercial operations and telling funds and companies why they would want us as an investor. Now there were these public markers recognising Temasek’s commitment to transparency and accountability, and reporting on the portfolio and performance we had achieved.”

The years that followed were hectic as the pace of investment picked up, she remembers. By 2005, there were various sector-focused investment teams within Temasek, and the company had offices in Mumbai, Beijing and Shanghai. By this time, Ming Pey had joined the Direct Investment team, covering sectors such as Technology and Financial Services. “We were growing the portfolio and doing deals very quickly. I remember it coincided with the launch of the BlackBerry device – suddenly, everyone could work anytime, anywhere, and many of us – and our bosses – were online almost 24/7,” she says.

Writing the next chapter

As the company grew and more investment staff came on board, Temasek’s ‘DNA’ evolved. “We used to operate in a small, cosy and family-like environment where everyone knew and took care of one another. But over time, the environment became more professional, and the focus shifted to achieving performance and delivering results.”

It was a shift that Ming Pey noted and voiced out to the then-head of HR Sebastian Tan.

“I asked him what kind of organisation we wanted to build – did we want to maintain a caring and nurturing environment, or push for a high performance and returns-oriented culture,” she recalls. “He asked me why the two could not co-exist, and then put down a challenge: if I felt so strongly about it, then I should do something to make it so. I took that as a personal challenge.” When she returned from maternity leave in 2007, Ming Pey joined the Organisation & People team to work on Organisational Development, including projects and initiatives that would ensure Temasek retained its strong sense of purpose and heritage, even as it continued to grow its portfolio and talent pool.

“This was where I could leverage my familiarity with how Temasek had evolved,” she says. “By integrating these stories into our internal communications and staff engagement exercises, we could help people understand our purpose and our way of life.”

Things crystallised in 2019 when she became a part of the working team for T2030, a 10-year roadmap for the firm that would guide the building of a resilient and forward looking portfolio in an increasingly complex world. “But before we could find a way forward, we had to first look back,” she says. One of her first tasks was to compile a “report card” for what the firm had achieved in the decade to 2020.

In the process, she was able to “connect the dots”, and see how the various business and institutional initiatives undertaken by the firm had come together to create the global investment powerhouse that Temasek had become.

The work Temasek does often takes years to play out, she says. “I tell those stories to my juniors so they understand how their decisions today will impact the company in the future. To me, that generational thinking is very important – to know that what I do today, somebody else is going to inherit.

"My hope is that a young employee in the future will look back at all the things we are doing today, and think to themselves, ‘So this is what they were trying to achieve for us’. I hope they value how it all came together, and go on to shape the Temasek that future generations will build on."