SYNOPSIS

Lifelong learning is lacking in the current graduates group not limiting to engineering graduates and it is viewed as serious problems and threats to the industry in employing capable graduates. This talk is meant for the YES group of young engineers who are keen to explore their career and leadership development as their long term goals. Engineering is a profession which is not very respectable and recognized in the current society and by and large is contributed by the engineers themselves for understating their competencies and qualifications in many incidences such as allowing non-engineers to practice engineering works and engineering designs……

The speaker would like to share his experiences in career and leadership development with the young engineers and better prepared YES group for the challenging environment. For the Students, they can learn how to choose their future specialist skills in academic or industry; for Graduates, they can choose their line of practice in engineering works or R&D and further advancement in their career.


BIODATA OF SPEAKERS

Ir. Dr. Cheong is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering and pursued his Master Programme research in Renewable Energy and completed the PhD programme in Manufacturing Management.
Ir Dr Cheong started his career as a mechanical engineer in a construction company and had successfully completed many highrise building projects in KL and few other major infra projects in Malaysia. He worked his way from an engineer to manager, general manager and ultimately became chief executives of public listed companies in Malaysia before his retirement in Dec 2013.
Besides working as professional manager for private companies, he and his business partner started an engineering consultancy company and completed many building projects particularly the hospitals in Malaysia both in the public and private sector. He is still active in M&E Services consultancy business and serves as Director in PE Associate Sdn Bhd.
Ir Dr Cheong is a registered Professional Engineer with the Board of Engineers Malaysia and a Fellow of The Institution of Engineers Malaysia. He has served as Interviewer for the Professional Interview (IEM) and PAE(BEM) for both engineering organizations since 1996 and he is the Chairman of the Membership Drive & Promotion Subcommittee for IEM and had served the Mechanical Engineering Technical Division as Committee Member, Secretary/Treasurer, Deputy Chairman, Chairman since 2004. He is very active in representing IEM in many engineering working groups for Green Technology, Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency issues.
Ir Dr Cheong’s has contributed to education sector as the Chairman of PIBG and School Board of the Balakong NTP(C) School since 1997. He also served as Industry Advisory Board Member of Inti International University and the IAP of the Mechanical Engineering Faculty of Inti. He has conducted many talks and courses under IEM in the field of career & leadership development, Green Technology, and Total Quality Management system for engineering organizations and universities.

Mr. Jan has spent 8 years building leadership skills in thousands of youth & professionals around the world and working with over 30 global and local organisations in Europe and Asia at the senior management level. His areas of expertise lie in how to engage Gen-Y to become 21st Century leaders, how to bridge labour & education markets to improve recruitment, and, how to use complexity science to create 21st Century leaders not 20th Century managers.
As Vice-President of AIESEC UK, he created the AIESEC UK Leadership Tournament and ran it at top universities like LSE, UCL, Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol. During his time in South-East Asia, Jan co-founded a leadership social enterprise in Cambodia and created the “1,000 Global Leaders Program”, a 6-month leadership program that currently develops over 1,000 Cambodian students every year and connects them to top employers in the country. He created and co-taught an innovative ‘leadership and entrepreneurship’ class at a top Cambodian university and he also coached a team of 3 top students who reached the finals of the McKinsey Mekong Business Plan Challenge 2010. Working with top companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever and ANZ Royal Bank, he created and delivered customized leadership development programs.
These experiences led him to believe that there are fundamental limitations in the prevalent management science paradigm and this led him to investigate the field of complex systems on the basis that today’s reality is dominated by complex systems. He is pioneering the integration of systems science with leadership, management & entrepreneurship to present a new idea of what it means to be a 21st Century leader through the creation of the ‘Leadapreneur’. Recognising the critical need for developing true 21st Century leaders in labour & education markets, Jan co-founded Leadapreneur to provide the solutions to organisations who are looking for innovative ways to build communities of 21st Century leaders