Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, Cynthia has a mind for business. She has an eye for detail, endless energy and ready to provide business insights from a different perspective and is always ready to voice her concerns. She will go all out for clients as she believes that good customer service goes a long way and is always generous with her smiles. We managed to catch hold of her to give you an indication of who she really is – from work to personal.
Describe your first sale/client.
The example that sticks out in my mind actually wasn’t my first sale or my direct sale, but a proposal that I’ve worked on with a senior member of my team at the time. It was a massive and complicated project and was a huge win for us. I guess the reason I remember it so vividly is because my colleague and I had worked so hard on the proposal including a full week of late nights (up to 1am) in the office. Everything was customised and carefully crafted, and the final product was kind of a work of art. The relief for me came when we finally submitted the monster of a proposal and promptly went out to celebrate afterwards. The win, which came months later, was awesome. All that hard work had paid off. It was a great feeling!
How’s your day-to-day work schedule looks like?
I don’t have a set day to day schedule per say as I like to keep things more flexible in the event of any last minute client meetings or the like. Of course my day begins with checking email to catch up on what’s going on with the team, and then I can plan out my goals for the day. As I travel a lot between our offices across the region, it’s important for me to be connected so that the team can reach me if need be. There is no such thing as a non-working vacation for me anymore!
Describe the company culture
i-Admin’s culture is much more like a family than a cold strict corporate culture. Everyone is quite friendly with each other, regardless of which office they sit in, and I think the fact that we have to work with each other across borders on a daily basis definitely adds to a bigger sense of community when we come together for a regional meeting or event. For me, the best thing about our company is that we are relatively flat. Everyone can talk to anyone. While we do have a basic structure of hierarchy as with any company, we do not believe in hierarchy in the traditional sense where the CEO or other directors of the company are unapproachable. We do our best to try and foster an environment of open discussion, and most of the time the best ideas and solutions will come from those who are working day in and day out on the very issue you’re trying to resolve. One of the things that make me proud to work at i-Admin is the fact that we are still in touch with most of our old employees, and the one thing they say they miss about us is our working environment. In fact, we recently had a big i-Admin alumni dinner in Hong Kong with about 40 attendees! What’s also great about it is that our old employees also come back to work for us, which I think is a win-win situation.
Assuming there is only one job (leave aside i-Admin for a second) that you could apply for at this stage of your career, where would you apply and why?
This is a really hard question, but if I wasn’t working at i-Admin, I would actually go back to school and get my master’s degree to become a counselor. With everything that is going on in the world today, I would want to use those skills that I have and that I learn from my degree to help those in need, particularly focusing on the refugees who currently need a lot of support.
What are you really into outside of work?
I am a huge movie and television buff. I watch a lot of movies and I love them. At the very least they provide a great way to escape, but my favorite movies are the ones that make you think or re-think your values, beliefs, and principles. If done well, it can really help you to understand a difficult situation better, which can then be implemented in your own life.