A powerhouse who’s helped transform the private education landscape and drive innovation in the classroom, her name is synonymous with the Sunway Education Group (SEG).
Under Dato’ Professor Dr Elizabeth Lee’s leadership since 1992, SEG has grown into one of Malaysia’s largest and most well-known education establishments, with 20 institutions around the country, including Sunway University.
She’s an educator with purpose and vision. Lee, 65, has steered SEG to achieve many firsts. Thanks to her, Australia’s Monash University became the first foreign university to set up an international branch in Malaysia in 1998. This came after a successful collaboration between Monash University and SEG, where Malaysian students would enrol and spend their first year in Malaysia before transferring to Monash campus in Australia to complete their degree, a partnership Lee spearheaded.
Attuned with societal trends and always thinking ahead, Lee served instrumental in the setting up of 42Malaysia, a coding school driven by peer-to-peer learning that aims to help produce more tech talents for the nation. Here students aged 17 and above focus on project-based learning simulating work in the real world, learning skills like time management and building conceptual frameworks that can be applied in the industry.
Lee is a respected thought leader in the field of private higher education provision, and her opinions and recommendations are regularly sought by the government. She has served on the board of advisors of the National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN), a think tank under the auspices of the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia.
For her immense contributions, she is the recipient of several international and national awards such as the Leadership Commitment for Malaysia Award from UN Women Regional Office for Asia. She is the first Malaysian woman to be elected Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.
Q&A with Elizabeth Lee, Educator and Chief Executive Officer, Sunway Education Group
Was education your lifelong ambition?
As a child, I had the usual childhood ambitions of being a doctor or a teacher. My earliest childhood memories involved recreating the classroom environment in my bedroom with dolls and teddy bears, and marking books with a red pen. I was an avid reader. As I grew up I realised I was terrified of cutting up live creatures and could not do animal dissections at 6th Form. Hence that ended my medical profession dreams and I seriously pursued my alternative aspirations to be an educator. It has always been my belief that a nation can only be as good as its people and that people need not only to be taught knowledge and skills but also how to think and attain wisdom to make well informed and critically thought-out decisions.
What do success and accomplishment mean to you and do you consider yourself successful?
Success is a journey, a work in progress. Success is also meaningless if people and planet are harmed along the way. Success is also not singular as it should always include all others who have contributed to the process of attaining the ultimate goal. I celebrate success when I see my students graduate and attaining their life goals. I celebrate success when I see my family happy, my colleagues being recognized and promoted. With every challenge, you can be assured of opportunity. Challenges keep our minds sharp and ticking, seeking solutions and the way around if not forward. Challenges basically need a mindset change.
As the CEO of Sunway Education Group, do you see your role as a calling or even as a mission?
To me and for me, education is both a mission and a calling. If the mission is not fulfilled, society could be at stake. It is also a calling because it transcends work as it is defined by place, time and pay. You have to love what you do and the people whose lives you wish to enhance because you believe that these very lives you touch will go on to transform the world at large. It’s a calling that comes with passion, dedication and great responsibility because we handle lives and futures.
As an educator, what are some endeavours that you’re undertaking to you empower women in leadership roles?
At Sunway, I labour on, with all new students especially, the fact that we celebrate inclusivity and diversity. This will include gender diversity where the need for gender diversity and inclusivity must be brought to everyone’s consciousness. For example, students and staff must understand why we must always reflect, in form and also substance, gender and even racial and international diversity. If there’s a Conference, care must be taken to curate a list of speakers who will represent the diversity. There are also specific HR policies in place to ensure that women are able to participate equitably especially in leadership roles.
What’s the biggest passion in your life and has that passion changed over the years?
God, family, students – they are my passion and it has been consistent over the years. God to point me to my true north – my raison d’etre; family to ground me to be true to my myself; students to excite me and remind me of my calling and my mission.
You are also known for advocating gender equality. Can you share some thoughts?
Men and women bring different contributions to the table. They each have different perspectives and different points of view, as well as different approaches to solving problems. We need to highlight the need to rethink gender stereotyping and perceived mindsets. Studies have also shown that having both men and women on teams improve collaboration, enhance combined knowledge, skills and talents. We should all look into improving policies in supporting gender equality, as well as diversity and inclusion. We should be continuously moving forward in empowering and enabling men as well as women in the workplace. Most important is to challenge stereotypes. We grow up with unconscious biases and prejudice, we need to learn and avoid making assumptions about people in general, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, religious affiliation, origins, nationality or even education, physical traits, and backgrounds. But first and foremost, we need to accept that biases exist.
What advice would you give to other women, especially younger women today?
Women and men are the yin and yang – both are needed to be in balance as we are created. Women should leverage on men whose strengths and attributes need to be recognized. Always make good allies with men. Be firm not argumentative and always earn your keep.
What makes you happy and inspires you to do what you are doing?
Happiness is contagious. I am happiest when the others round me are happy. It is also why I make corny jokes at times or laugh at myself. But what inspires me to do what I do must be meaningful. The end goal may not be attainable yet or even in my life time but I must know we are on the right track getting there. In other words I do need to know and to buy into what I shall invest my time to do.
What do you hope to achieve in the education fraternity (or other areas) before you retire?
There is much to do and there can be no time for ‘retirement’ even if the formal paid job is over, since education is life-long. As the world evolves, the needs of society will change and so must education. As such we talk about re-learning, whether it is in acquiring new skills, new knowledge and more importantly new thinking, leading to creativity and innovation. As education needs become more critical, accessibility needs to be addressed. Nothing can be worse that having tools which cannot be used because of they are beyond reach or simply cut-off because we do not know how to use them!
Finally, what would you tell your younger self?
I would tell my younger self to ensure that we do things which will not cause us any regret in time to come. Given it is hard to predict the future and it’s always easier on hindsight and because of this I also try not to live with regret and to move on, since what has happened is now in the past and it is the future I need to secure and do much better in.
