Georgette Tan believes in telling it right. The real story, framed right, sometimes with “warts and all,” without sugar-coating it. A communications veteran whose career has spanned senior leadership at Asia Business News, CNBC Asia and Mastercard, Georgette has shaped stories at the highest levels of media and business.
Today, she brings that same clarity to board leadership and women’s advocacy, including through Board Agenda, whose mentoring programme has helped place 40 women onto 90 boards and committees in five years.
For Georgette, making a mark is not one single achievement. It changes across life stages: what it means at school, at work, in a community, around a board table. The form may shift, but underneath it there’s always a set of values, characteristics, a line that’s carried through.
In Georgette’s life, that red thread is easy to trace. It runs through her belief in truth, her gratitude for the people who have stood beside her, and her commitment to offering other women as many opportunities as she can. She believes in passing it on to the women around her and the next generation.
“It’s not just a handout. Very often, it’s a hand up.”
That hand up has become one of the clearest expressions of Georgette’s work. Through United Women Singapore, where she was president and now serves on the board, she chairs a STEM-focused girls’ empowerment programme. The work gives young women access to mentors, office visits, research centres, innovation hubs and an annual STEM festival where they can see the futures available to them.
At first, Georgette thought the programme was about technical knowledge but over time, she realised its deepest effect was confidence. Many girls arrive shy, unsure of their place in fields they may have been told were meant for boys. As they work, they start to recognise themselves as belonging in the room and they leave with whole new visions for scholarship and careers.
A concern for dignity runs through her work with SHE, or SG Her Empowerment, and its She Cares centre, which supports women affected by online harm. Many arrive carrying shame for something that was never their fault. The centre helps them speak to counsellors, file police reports, connect with lawyers and begin to stand upright again.
“It is about the confidence that one gets when you know that you’re good at something and that you’re recognised for being good. You walk differently, you present differently, and that’s what we want for these young women.”
What connects these initiatives is transformation. The same belief informs Georgette’s work with Board Agenda, a mentoring programme that supports women who are ready to serve on boards. For Georgette, this matters because boards are where strategy is set, futures are imagined, resources are directed and institutional values are tested. More women at the table means more than gender representation. It means bringing different forms of knowledge into the room.
Women, she says, bring “diversity of thought leadership style, but definitely experience, that lived experience.” Organisations that serve communities, employ women, shape policy or influence public life need decision-makers who understand the breadth of the people they affect.
The same is true of storytelling. A single voice has power, Georgette believes, but the force of many women speaking together is harder to ignore. That is what she hopes HerMark makes visible: not one exceptional woman standing apart, but the cumulative force of women whose work, choices, intelligence and courage have shaped an industry, often without being fully recognised.
“The power of one soul, lone voice, is powerful. But when you have the collective power of all these women together, that cannot be ignored.”
If Georgette’s work has been shaped by truth, gratitude and service, the earliest model was her mother. She describes her in practical terms, but with unmistakable appreciation. The eldest child in her family, her mother lost her own mother when she was barely in her teens. She had younger siblings to care for and did not go to school until she was twelve. At that age, she still could not read or write.
Georgette remembers the stories her mother told her. Looking at a book and crying because she could not understand it. Still, she persisted. She learned, became a teacher, and later used her salary to put her siblings through school and medical school.
“She never lost faith in herself,” Georgette says. Her mother was fierce, beloved by her students, and always oriented towards family, not only her own children and siblings, but the wider school family she served. She placed others before herself without making that sacrifice the story.
“She left a very, very strong mark on me.” Georgette shared. It is easy to see the inheritance. The belief that education can alter a life. The instinct to blaze the trail for the women around her. The understanding that a mark is not only what one achieves, but what one makes possible for others.
When asked to imagine her mark, Georgette chooses the lotus. The lotus rises through murky water, rooted in conditions that might seem to hold it down, yet still pushing upward until it blooms above the surface.
For Georgette, that image carries the lives of so many women she has advocated for. “If I could make somebody else’s life just a little bit better,” she says, “I would consider that a big win.”
It is a fitting measure for a woman whose work has never been only about speaking clearly, but about helping others stand more fully in their own lives. It is a modest measure, but it says everything about the way Georgette has moved through the world. Enabling more women’s voices to find their way into the room.
HerMark is a visual and narrative study of women shaping the marketing, advertising, and communications industry. Branding in Asia is publishing the ongoing series in partnership with HerMark.
Learn more at hermark.world, and read more of the interviews here.
