Faculty Profile

Professor Lily Kong has been President of Singapore Management University since 2019, the first Singaporean to lead the institution and the first woman to head any university in Singapore. She also holds the Lee Kong Chian Chair Professorship of Social Sciences, with a courtesy appointment at the College of Integrative Studies. She was previously Provost of SMU (2015-2018). Before that, she held various senior management roles at the National University of Singapore.

At SMU, she has spearheaded significant strategic initiatives, focusing on Digital Transformation, Sustainable Living, and Growth in Asia. Under her leadership, SMU launched new colleges, research centres and institutes, and overseas centres, boosting its standing and reputation significantly. Enrolment, research funding, industry partnerships, and philanthropic support have surged during her tenure, along with new infrastructure to support SMU's growth. SMU had also gained recognition as the best employer in the Singapore university sector by The Straits Times. The university is ranked amongst the top three in the world for archival research in accounting, second in the world for software engineering, second in Asia for research in business schools, and has won best accelerator/incubator programme and best co-working space in Southeast Asia.

As part of SMU’s 25th anniversary, she had also launched the institution’s new Vision and Mission, reaffirming aspirations to be Asia’s premier global city university, at the nexus of management, social sciences, and technology.

Qualifications

• PhD in Geography, University College London, 1991
• MA in Geography, National University of Singapore, 1988
• BA(Hons) in Geography (First Class), National University of Singapore, 1986

Area of Specialisation

• Urban transformations
• Social and cultural change in Asian cities