I began my career as a CPA in accounting and transaction advisory services at Big Four firms, where I learned the discipline of numbers: valuation, financial due diligence, restructuring, and the logic behind corporate transactions. Those early years gave me a strong technical foundation. But I gradually realised that finance is not only about accuracy. It is also about judgment, communication, and leadership.
That was one of the reasons I pursued the Cambridge MBA in Finance. The MBA was a defining moment in my career and gave me a truly global perspective. It helped me connect financial analysis with strategy, markets, people, and organisations. It also gave me the confidence to move across different finance environments, from consulting and investment banking to CFO roles at listed firms and startups and eventually to building my own advisory business.
Time in Cambridge
After Cambridge, I worked in capital markets research and investment banking at Nomura and Citi, before moving into senior roles in infrastructure investment, corporate development and corporate finance. Later, as CFO of a listed company and startups preparing for IPOs, I experienced operating finance from the inside out. This was very different from advising from the outside. As a hands-on CFO, finance is not just a model. It is cash runway, investor trust, audit pressure, governance, strategic capital allocation and the ability to explain difficult decisions clearly and in a timely way.
Those experiences shaped my current work through GARYO FINANCE, an independent advisory firm. Today I advise companies and startups across ASEAN on cross-border M&A, capital raising, valuation, IPO readiness, CFO issues, and strategic finance. My work sits between strategic advisory and practical execution: helping companies think clearly about capital, governance, growth, and value creation.
I also write regularly on ASEAN capital markets, corporate finance, private credit, financial restructuring, and valuation through the GARYO FINANCE Insights newsletter, as well as op-ed pieces in regional business media such as Nikkei Asia, Bangkok Post, Asia Times, and The Business Times Singapore. The newsletter has become a way for me to develop a more systematic view on ASEAN finance, while the Financial Insights page on our website serves as a broader archive of my finance writing and analysis. For me, writing has become part of finance thought leadership. It is a way to turn complex market developments into practical insight for executives, investors, and policymakers.
Feature in Bangkok Post
ASEAN is full of under-analysed and under-valued companies, fragmented capital markets, and misunderstood risks. I believe there is a need for clearer financial language to bridge regional businesses with global capital. This is also the thinking behind my company’s ASEAN Valuation Lab initiative. We have already developed an analytical framework covering major listed corporates and a wide range of asset classes across ASEAN, with a focus on cost of capital, investment returns, valuation, and capital allocation. The next phase is to expand the coverage and test how this data can be used more practically by investors, CFOs, founders, and students. I believe this could also be an area where collaboration with the Cambridge Judge community may be meaningful.
Looking ahead, I would like to contribute more actively to practical finance education, especially for MBA students and young finance professionals who want to build finance careers across markets. The next generation of finance leaders will need more than technical modelling skills. They will need to understand strategy, governance, capital markets, communication, and the human side of decision-making.
My Cambridge MBA experience helped me make those connections throughout my career. I would be very glad to give something back to the Cambridge community, through alumni engagement, practical finance education, thought leadership, and support for students who want to build meaningful careers in finance.