Director, COMO Foundation

Dr Patricia Tan Shu Ming is Director of the COMO Foundation, the corporate philanthropy of the COMO Group. The Foundation supports non-profit organisations and social enterprises that address the income-generation, education and skill development needs of at-risk women and girls in developing countries.

Dr Tan was educated in Singapore, the United States, and England. She obtained her bachelors and masters degrees from Stanford University and her doctorate from Oxford. She was Singapore’s Rhodes Scholar for 1997.

Dr Tan’s careers has focused on two areas: cooperation between the public and private sectors for social good, and the role of ideas and values in shaping corporate identity and determining assets of intangible value. Most recently, she co-authored, with Durreen Shanaz, a research paper for the Rockefeller Foundation: "Measuring the Social Impact of Sustainable Asian Social Enterprises." 

Dr Tan has brought these two fields of interest together at the COMO Foundation, which she helped to establish in 2003. Working with the management of the COMO Group, which includes the Club 21 chain of companies (www.club21global.com) and of COMO Hotels and Resorts (www.como.bz), she spearheads philanthropic initiatives, employee engagement activities and corporate social responsibility.