Dr Kelly Hee is the COO at the Center for Competency-Based Learning and Development (CBLD). Before joining CBLD, Dr Kelly Hee has held key positions in government agencies and commercial companies. She was previously Director at Singapore Workforce Development Agency and Director of Training at Marina Bay Sands Singapore.  She has more than 17 years of experience in industry manpower planning and development, talent acquisition (local and international) and corporate training and development. She has a Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of South Australia and an MBA from Imperial College, University of London. She was an award winner in the Rotary Club – Young Executive of the Year (1999) award.

At WDA, she led the development of the Service Excellence Framework to support the “Go-the-Extra-Mile Service” initiative at the National level. Her key achievement during this period was also the development and implementation of a national service curriculum and trained more than 30,000 workforce and 3,000 Liaison Officer/Volunteers in preparation for the Singapore 2006 IMF/World Bank Event.  She also sits on the Customer Centric Initiative (CCI) committee to help service organizations up their level of service.  Dr Kelly Hee led the workforce development strategies and implementation of national standards and training infrastructure, i.e. Workforce Skills Qualification systems (WSQ) for these sectors – Healthcare Support, Landscape/Floristry and Security and the set up of three National Continuing Education and Training (CET) Institutes-the Security Industry Institute and the Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology and the Singapore Institute for Retail Studies. The Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology was awarded the National CET Centre status within 3 years on inception. To address the shortage of allied health professionals, she worked closely with the Ministry of Health and healthcare employers to offer a professional conversion programmes for mid career entrants to puck the gap and to allow mid career conversion for Allied Health professions in areas of Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy. To address the skills gap and career development pathway of Healthcare Support staff in Singapore, a Healthcare Support Workforce Skills Qualification framework was developed which covers areas such as Nursing Care, Podiatry Support, Operating Theatre Support, Sterilisation Support, Administrative Support, Pharmacy Support. As council member on the Landscape Industry Council, Kelly proposed several manpower development initiatives for these sectors. Through her work with the Landscape Architects Association and engagement with the Institute of Landscape Architects, the region’s first Master in Landscape Architect was developed and offered by National University of Singapore. All the manpower development initiatives received much media coverage and industry support.

As Director of Training, Dr Kelly Hee was part of the pioneering HR team for Marina Bay Sands. Her key responsibilities were to put in place the talent development strategies to support the business strategy of the company. In preparation for the preopening, she led the planning of the pre opening simulation plan, service strategy and sourcing of pre opening training centers for gaming and other businesses. She also developed the company’s Training and Development policies, guidelines and standard operating procedures and was involved in the development and evaluation of a regional Training Management System. The three policies that she developed were training policies on training sponsorship assistance, internship programme and management traineeship programme. In addition, she established external relations with local tertiary institutions and CET centres, including universities, polytechnics and ITE for partnership on building a pipeline of local talents from internship programmes and campus recruitment and launched the internship programme in Marina Bay Sands. To ensure that Singapore had an industry standard for the Gaming industry, she was involved in the extensive development and validation of the WDA Casino Gaming Workforce Skills Qualification. She was involved in defining the competencies and qualifications for casino gaming operators, supervisors and managers in areas such as table games, slots, surveillance, player development marketing and casino finance.

Dr Kelly Hee honed her curriculum development and upfront training delivery skills in her previous roles in the early part of her career as Management Training Officer with IPAM, Trainer and Corporate Sales Manager at Dale Carmegie Training and Lecturer at the School of Business Management, Nanyang Polytechnic. She enjoys interacting with course participants and has been described by participants as a caring, knowledgeable and dynamic trainer.