Singapore's Lost Son

This is the true story of a boy with a simple dream—to become a man. But he fell and became a dropout of school, friends, life, himself. But with the helping hand of a teacher, he turned his life around, found friends and love, and fulfilled his dream. This is the story of how that boy went from dropout to millionaire Princeton PhD. Expelled from four junior colleges (he was labelled ‘subnormal’ and not academically inclined), Kaiwen Leong sat for the A level examinations as a private candidate while experimenting with Internet websites to try his hand at entrepreneurship. He studied hard and did well enough to be admitted to Boston University in the US where he graduated with two bachelors and two masters degrees in economics and mathematics in four years. And then he went on to obtain postgraduate degrees at Princeton University. He is a member of America’s most prestigious academic societies and has published research papers on economics, mathematics and physics. Today he lectures at Nanyang Techonological University and is an economist at Spring Singapore. Find out how Dr Leong picked up his life.


Dr Kaiwen Leong is an economist, entrepreneur, academic researcher, teacher and civil servant. He was twice awarded the Princeton University Towbes Prize for “Outstanding Teaching”. The entrepreneur in him developed Internet start-ups when he was in his early 20s. He returned to Singapore in 2011 where he worked with SPRING Singapore as economist.

 

He founded Princeton Mind, a social enterprise aimed at helping youth at risk and juvenile offenders achieve their dreams. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at Nanyang Technological University, an Associate Faculty Member at the Singapore Institute of Management, and consults for many private sector organizations, including Singapore Business Federation and Oxford Economics.