The Straits Times - Lunch with Sumiko: How HMI Medical CEO grew her parents’ company from the family dinner table to the boardroom

“Growing up, Ms Chin Wei Jia’s family dinners were never just about food. They were a window into her parents’ working lives.

”Her father, a general practitioner, would sometimes be interrupted mid-meal by his pager and would step away to tend to a patient’s concern. Her mother, a university business professor, shared stories about academia and the corporate world.

From her father, she learnt that healthcare demands constant availability and commitment to patients. From her mother, she absorbed the importance of structure and systems.

“We had a lot of interesting conversations over the dinner table, and we pretty much were learning without knowing that we were learning,” she says, referring to her two siblings. Today, as the executive director and group chief executive of HMI Medical, the company her parents founded, Ms Chin, 47, straddles both worlds: the immediate human realities of healthcare and the strategic discipline of business management.

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