By SGN | 15 Oct 2025
When Serena was 10 years old, she took a bus ride, accompanied by her mother.
As the vehicle pulled into Orchard Road, eventually trailing towards Scotts Road, Serena looked out the window. She glanced upon Alliance Française, the local non-profit French language centre, and told her mother, “I want to learn French.”
And while she had no idea where her impulse to learn a foreign language would lead to, this suggestion unwittingly altered her life trajectory. Her parents, who were supportive of her interests, enrolled her in French classes.
“I’d lived and studied in Singapore for most of my life. But I knew I had wanderlust and would one day live and work overseas, I was that eager to see the world,” she reveals.
Over the years, she would embark on an international career that would see her working in some of the world’s foremost financial and commercial capitals – Paris, London, New York, Singapore, and Zurich, where she is currently located.
Paris: The first leap abroad
Nearly two decades later, Serena would interview at a French bank, whose hiring processes could only be described as gruelling and formidable.
“This interview was not some friendly, café-style coffee chat where they ask about your life and interests,” she recalls. “This was multiple rounds of a three-person interview panel, where they grilled you with tough questions.”
After some intensive coaching, she was able to interview in French, following which she successfully clinched a job in investment banking in Paris, at financial services group Societe Generale.
She would spend four years in Paris. Some of her more amusing cultural shocks came in the form of the French keyboard, whose alphabet keys seemed all over the place compared to its English counterpart; and the French number format, which uses the comma as a decimal separator and dot as thousands separator. Funnily enough, in Switzerland, the dot is the decimal separator but the apostrophe is the thousands separator.
However, the biggest detraction came in the form of assimilation.
“Paris is so easy on the eye, but it was difficult fitting in, because of the cultural differences, and I was commuting to London weekly anyway,” she recalls, deciding it was time for a change.
London: The next stop
Serena moved to London with the bank and immediately felt at ease with the groove and rhythm of work and life.
She felt alive in the historical richness of the city and was constantly amused to see places she had only read about in books (Baker Street, home of Sherlock Holmes) and heard in songs (the band Blur sang about places like Kentish Town and Camden). Every step felt like a peek into history and also a lunge forward into a future brimming with possibilities.
It was in London that a senior colleague told her about business school and an MBA in the United States, and offered to write her letter of recommendation. She seized the chance.
“When you’re young, you have a carelessness and a fearlessness that makes you do absolutely crazy things,” she shares. “If I had an idea, I would focus my energies and attention on it, and get the job done. I wish I had more of that attitude now.”
This approach to career and life is something that has seen Serena through multiple phases of her life – her master’s degree at Dartmouth College, an international banking career where she found community across continents, and finally, her work as an investor and a published author.
An education amidst the greenery
After Investment Banking in Paris and London, Serena intended to head to New York to do an MBA, given her background in finance. However, she changed her mind after visiting Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in the United States.
“I fell in love with the setting of the school, deep in nature in New England,” she shares. “I knew this is where I wanted to be for a couple of years.”
For those unfamiliar, Dartmouth College is in Hanover, a town in New Hampshire, USA, offering lush scenery and gorgeous natural landscapes. Being amidst nature introduced to her a more meaningful and intentional way of life. “This was my first real experience of being in nature this vast,” she recalls. Knowing her time in the proverbial wilderness was limited, she was keen on making the most of it.
“I knew I’d be back in the city soon enough, so it made me embrace New Hampshire – which is buried in snow for six months in a year – even more,” she recalls. “The experience of scraping snow off your car, or trudging through sub-zero temperatures (think minus 15 or 20 degrees Celsius) is an otherworldly experience.”
Being surrounded by that much natural beauty made Serena’s experience almost magical. So profound did she find her experience at Dartmouth, that she gladly decided to become an ambassador for the institution, eventually joining the Tuck Asia Pacific Council, which serves as an advisory board to the university’s business school.
“Being at Dartmouth gave me so much joy and inspiration, and what’s more, I was surrounded by incredible people,” she shares. “So, I wanted to give back.”
New York, then Singapore-bound: Homecoming with a mission
Emboldened by her time at Dartmouth, Serena’s natural carefreeness and curiosity sparked within her a desire to know, see, and experience more.
Shortly after her MBA, J.P. Morgan came calling.
“They invited me down to New York to talk to the team for an opportunity within the private banking division,” she recalls. “Given my experience working with institutional clients, they’d hoped I’d return to Singapore to cover the Southeast Asian markets.”
This option, albeit a surprise to Serena, ticked many of her boxes. The role would be based in Asia, in a place where she could easily thrive. “Furthermore, I’d just completed my MBA in the US, so I was brimming with a sense of bravado, of wanting to speak up and share my thoughts, and think bigger,” she recalls.
And while these skills served her well during her time in Singapore, what she did not anticipate was the sense of responsibility that came with the private banking territory. “At the end of the day, I had to be accountable to a person or family, with regards to their finances. It was not only private banking, it was very personal,” she admits.
“I also realised that it wasn’t about the money. While money is the asset that binds these families, it’s not the be-all and end-all. I had to examine how the family accumulated wealth, what they wanted to do with it, and the value they placed on it.”
Starting a fresh chapter in Zurich, and finding a sense of belonging abroad
After a decade in JP Morgan and five years with a family office in Singapore, Serena’s next chapter of life would take her to Zurich, the nerve centre of Swiss and global private wealth management.
She was offered the role of Managing Director at Julius Baer, a bank with 135 years of history and the first pure private bank to be listed in Switzerland, to grow the Asian coverage in Zurich. In her role, Serena helps families from Asia diversify and book their assets in Switzerland, demarcating clearly where families make their wealth and grow their wealth. In 2024, she relocated with her family and their pet dog.
Throughout her international banking and finance career, Serena had struggled with an “insider versus outsider” feeling, where she always wondered what it would take for her to “belong” in her new environment.
In places like London and New York, where there were more Singaporeans, it was easier to find people matching her context and background. Yet, the feeling of not entirely fitting in persisted.
Ironically, it was in Zurich, a largely homogenous society that she finally put her feelings regarding the issue to rest, gaining clarity on the “insider versus outsider” feeling.
“That’s when I had my ‘aha’ moment,” she clarifies. “I was asking myself the wrong question, which was about asking to belong. Did this mean that I would have to become more like them, that is, more Swiss?”
This did not sit right with her. “Then it dawned on me that I will always be an outsider, that is the value I bring. I don’t need to be an insider, because at the end of the day, I am Singaporean. I am who I am.”
Finally secure in her Singaporean identity, she felt safe enough to be curious about the people around her. “Asking them about their traditions, ways of living, lived experiences, and holiday rituals, is the bridge. That kind of one-on-one connection, where I open a window into their world, is where the magic happens.”
“When we open our hearts and minds, we set ourselves up for strong, beautiful friendships and connections,” she shares.
Besides musing about fitting in a society, she also offers practical advice on how to efficiently settle into a new place.
“There are a few things I consider non-negotiable. The first would be to have good housing,” she shares. “A home is where I’d feel happy, and want to spend time. A place that makes me feel at ease.”
For people who prefer to host friends and have company, Serena recommends paying extra for a good apartment. Her second tip is about transportation. “Figure out how you intend to commute – whether you have direct transportation to work, to nature, wherever you want to go, or if you need a car.”
Her third gem of wisdom is about life and personal administration. “In the first few months after you move to a new place, take time to figure out where your grocery stores, restaurants, and handypeople are. These are the starting elements of building your life and tribe in a new place.”
Her parting advice is one that’s both sweet and sentimental. “Call your parents, and do it often,” she states. “It’s harder being the person left behind, than to be the one moving away. And our parents aren’t getting any younger – so call them. It’ll make them happy.”
Investing in women worldwide
After spending decades in the finance industry, Serena finally accrued enough resources to invest in others. Outside of her current role at Julius Baer, her personal investment philosophy is to back founders with exceptional stories and to champion women founders and entrepreneurs. She also founded the organisation Women in Family Offices to bring together women and male allies in the growing family office community in Singapore.
“Women have always been my safe space,” she affirms. “As a woman in finance, I know firsthand how important it is to invest in women. When you have finances at your disposal, you have options.”
The last decade in finance has also opened her eyes to the stark statistics that form women’s experiences, especially in the business world. “Women-only teams or companies receive only 2% of venture capitalist funding,” she explains. “Post-COVID, this number dropped even more, to 1%. So, I’ve decided to do my part, and use my resources meaningfully .”
Turning observations into compelling literature
After being in the company of thousands of women who have had to make important financial decisions, Serena landed on a few key observations.
“When women take charge of money, everyone benefits, because women are always thinking of the wider community, and are more cautious about what they spend on,” she reflects.
“One takeaway for me, however, is that money is inherently more tangled up in emotions for women, than it is for men. We are motivated by mission and purpose, and we tend to be risk-aware, rather than risk-averse. But once we commit to something financially, we are in it for the long haul.”
Over time, she realised that women were just not talking about money. Even her own friend groups talked about relationships, family, travel, and holidays. Just not finances. In contrast, her male friends would readily talk about these issues, frequently and unabashedly.
These lived experiences served as the catalyst for her book titled, ‘Why Women Don’t Talk Money’, published by Penguin Random House, which features 23 women from diverse backgrounds sharing about their unique and nuanced approach to money, as well as their successes and struggles related to the same.
“All the women in the book have different passions and relationships with money,” she shares. The book features CEOs, Olympian athletes, food critics, models, entrepreneurs – women of all ages, who are at different stages of their relationship with money.
As far as her own personal finances were concerned, Serena also took the time to chart out a unique course in life.
“Over time, I’ve taken my ‘money power’ back. I take care of my bank accounts, I do my own investing, and I put funds aside consistently to safeguard my goals,” she explains.
Her final piece of advice to women? Be bold about money. “We cannot think that it is not our place, that it is not for us,” she states. “We need to be intentional about the way we approach money, and have important conversations about how much we’re making or earning, and about our investments and wealth creation plans.”
“Think of money as fuel – We are the car, money is fuel, and the point of a car is not to have more fuel but to get somewhere; it’s about the journey and people we bring along. That is true wealth.”
About Serena
A seasoned financial professional and Tuck Business School alumni, her resume includes the likes of GIC, JPMorgan, and Julius Baer. She is also a seasoned investor with a focus on women-led businesses, and a published author.
Connect with her here.
