My name is Ash and I was born and raised in sunny San Diego, California. When I arrived at SourceSage, I was filled with nervous but excited energy. I came to Singapore expecting to dive into a business culture driven by innovation and technology and that is exactly where I found myself at SourceSage. As I head back to university in Denver, Colorado, one of the leading startup cities in the U.S., I am thrilled to bring with me the knowledge I have acquired here. Over the course of 2 months I have been immersed in researching the B2B landscape in Singapore. I have certainly gained a solid foundation of knowledge that I never thought I would have regarding gig economy, fintech, payment gateways and start-up culture.

In addition to learning about the most recent trends in business technology, I played a role in the debut of 99%SME B2B- the DBS business-to-business marketplace that SourceSage acts as an operator for. I categorized product types and utilized my English-language fluency by helping proof content pages for grammatical errors. I felt honored to work on a project sponsored by DBS, a leading commercial bank in Singapore I never heard of before. It turns out, they are a key stakeholder in the digitization of Singapore SMEs. Another topic I was involved in researching.

Even as an intern, I was included in conference calls conducted online with all of SourceSage at their global offices. Hearing how an international team communicates effectively with one and another and embraces diversity is something I will always value and apply in all of my future endeavors.

The project given to me required initiating communication with several local businesses. By revisiting my written email and telephone skills, I was able to engage with young entrepreneurs and business owners who had long, impressive career histories without being intimidated. As networking becomes more and more critical to business-relationship building, I can honestly say I finally see the importance LinkedIn has come to have in today’s working society!

I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Jian Min, his father Mr. John Sim, Toong Yuen, Ronald, Mervyn, Yu Fan, Jackie and Qing Yao for believing I had what it took to contribute to their vision at SourceSage. I truly wish your team the very best and will never forget this experience.