On 16 April 2026, every member of KLC International Institute gathered for a full day of AI learning, honest conversation, and shared commitment to the direction forward.
The full KLCII team at the AMK Campus, 16 April 2026.
Every organisation that takes transformation seriously runs into the same question: where do you start?
At KLC International Institute (KLCII), the answer has always been the same. You start with your own people. You start from within.
On 16 April 2026, KLCII held its Strategic Learning Directions and Staff Training Day at its Ang Mo Kio Campus. The theme for the day was “Transforming Together: AI, Capability and Relevance.” From 8am to 6pm, the whole organisation paused its regular work to learn, ask questions, imagine and commit.
Setting the Tone: Every Staff Member is a Manager of Change
Dr Chua Ying Hwee, CEO & Principal, delivering his opening address.
Dr Chua Ying Hwee opened the day exhorting all to go deeper and wider. He looked back at the journey of transformation KLCII has been on since seven years ago, and reminded the team that they have all already become change makers. In an era where AI enables even greater and deeper change, he asked each staff member to think of themselves as a manager of “AI headcounts”—team members reporting to them, who can multiply their effectiveness, but also need to be directed, reviewed, and held to a standard.
It is a simple idea, but a serious one. Transformation now sits at the fingertips of every staff member. That is the operating principle for 2026.
VPs Take the Stage: Real AI, Real Work, Real Results
After the CEO’s address, key department leaders took the stage to share how their teams have already been using AI in real work.
These were honest public accounts from people who had tried things and learned. Some attempts worked brilliantly. Others failed productively. The examples covered a lot of ground: generating presentations, automating data scraping, streamlining class formation, automating the processing of salary support and data administration, enhancing learning and assessment design, and applying AI to quality assurance and research workflows.
For staff watching their own leaders share early wins and candid lessons, the message landed: AI is already here, in the building, in our work, being figured out together.
Kok Sher Min
VP, Marketing
Ally Siew
VP, Business
Wing Dai
VP, Operations
Dr Chen Shi
Vice Principal, Chinese Early Childhood & Language Teaching Programmes
Jade Chen
VP, Organisation Development
Irene Ong
KLCII Reimagineers Consultant
KLCII’s Vice Presidents and Reimagineers Consultants sharing their departments’ AI applications and lessons learnt.
Speakers: Kok Sher Min (VP, Marketing); Dr Chen Shi (Vice Principal, Chinese Early Childhood & Language Teaching Programmes); Ally Siew (VP, Business); Jade Chen (VP, Organisation Development); Wing Dai and Irene Ong (KLCII Reimagineers Consultants).
The Roadmap: Where KLCII Is Headed
Chong Chan Vee presenting KLCII’s AI Roadmap.
After the VP sharing session, Mr Chong Chan Vee took the floor to propose KLCII’s AI Roadmap, an overview of the institute’s strategy and the milestones already reached on its AI journey. He laid out the path ahead: how KLCII intends to keep building AI capability across the organisation, and what role every staff member plays in keeping that momentum going.
The roadmap is a living commitment, shaped by staff willing to experiment, learn and share with one another. The morning session made clear that with sufficient care taken to protect personal data, staff are encouraged to apply AI tools at work responsibly, reflectively, and with care for the people around them.
An Afternoon Built for Action
Dr Ray Lu, CEO of Junyi Academy, delivering his keynote address.
After lunch, Dr Ray Lu, CEO of Junyi Academy, took the stage. Lu has built Taiwan’s largest free K-12 online education platform, with over 5 million users, and has worked with organisations like TSMC, Google and DBS Bank on enterprise AI transformation. He came to KLCII with a specific argument: KLCII is uniquely positioned to lead AI transformation in Singapore, and he laid out exactly why.
His starting comparison was John Dewey’s Lab School at the University of Chicago in 1896, a small institution of around 140 students that nonetheless reshaped global education. Dewey’s lab worked because hypotheses met real learners every day, separate from the bureaucracy of the wider university. KLCII, Lu argued, sits in the same kind of position now. It is close enough to learners and SMEs to iterate fast, with enough institutional weight to codify what works.
KLCII’s name itself, he pointed out, maps cleanly to global AI literacy standards. K for Knowledge: what AI can do and where it breaks (hallucinations versus facts). L for Literacy: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, complex problem solving. C for Character: curiosity, innovation, empathy, grit.
Lu then turned to where KLCII sits on the technology adoption curve. Most AI transformations stall at the chasm between early adopters and the early majority, and education and the SME sector are the two segments most underserved at exactly that gap. Singapore currently already offers the strongest AI adoption environment in the region. KLCII’s three anchors give it the reach to bridge the chasm: its Crestar Education Group heritage, its ongoing consultancy work with Singapore SMEs, and its connection to the education sector from early childhood to adult education. Together, those anchors let KLCII turn its own transformation blueprint into something the Singapore market and the wider Southeast Asian region can actually use.
His address asked the harder questions about what AI means for the value of your work, for how you grow, learn and stay relevant, and for your place in an organisation that takes this seriously.
After the keynote, Dr Chua facilitated the SPAR3 session, taking 20 cross-functional teams of staff through a rapid sensemaking and prototyping exercise. Around each table, colleagues took turns acting as consultants for one another, using AI to solve real problems brought from their day jobs. Nine of the tables volunteered to share their solutions. This was followed by another round of SPAR3, to further refine and apply lessons gleaned from other teams.
Cross-functional teams work through AI prototyping exercises.
Closing: From Ideas to Policy
The day closed with an open panel featuring Dr Chua, Dr Lu and Mr Chong, where the deeper questions of policy, capability and pace took centre stage.
Why This Matters Beyond KLCII
KLCII is a pre-approved Consultant under Singapore’s SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+). This means that organisations navigating through their own AI transformation can tap on KLCII’s first-hand expertise in adopting AI and redesigning jobs, while enjoying the benefit of being supported by up to $150,000 of funding from the government.
The work starts with sensemaking. Before any prototype gets built, KLCII looks at the business, reimagines what is possible, and identifies the leverage points: the one or two places where AI can shift the most weight for the least friction. From there, the institute draws on its core people development expertise to help companies build capabilities in-house, and layers on the craft of motivating and engaging staff through the parts of change that may be uncomfortable. Combine all of that with the experience of having gone through transformation itself, and KLCII can help a company prototype change in the areas that matter most, then make it stick.
On 16 April 2026, KLCII came together for a full day and ran our AI transformation playbook on ourselves, as our own first client.
Singapore is calling on every enterprise to step forward. We want our clients to look at us and say: they have been through transformation themselves. I believe they can help us with ours.
