Boldly Breaking Boundaries with Karen Chan | E5

We look at what it means to boldly break boundaries at the workplace!

We speak with Karen Chan, Group Chief Commercial Officer, Air Asia Aviation Group. She shares her experience being fearlessly bold and having a growth mindset to embark on challenging career transitions. Always one to take on bold moves, Karen shares how she has surrounded herself with strong mentors and family support. 

Finally, Karen shares her thoughts about transitioning into advisory board roles, and how she’s embraced this new experience. We were inspired by Karen’s candor, focus, and boldness in making these crucial transitions. 

Connect with Karen Chan

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· Vanessa Iloste (Host)

· Vanessa Teo (Host)

· Aaron Wu (Producer)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Vanessa T: Hello everyone! Today we speak with Karen Chan, Group Chief Commercial Officer for AirAsia Aviation Group. 

[00:00:12] Vanessa I: It's such a pleasure, Vanessa, speaking with Karen about how she boldly breaks boundaries at the workplace. 

[00:00:19] Vanessa T: And as a woman in a senior leadership role, Karen shares how she navigates through different career transitions, acquiring expertise and global experience that built towards his success on the C suite and in board roles.

[00:00:33] Vanessa I: Karen will also share how she integrates career and life as a working mom, skillfully making choices that allow her to achieve her fullest potential all around. 

[00:00:45] Vanessa T: So we're really excited to share this conversation with you and hope that it will inspire you to boldly break boundaries. 

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our new episode of Career Transitions. We're your hosts, Vanessa Iloste and Vanessa Teo. 

[00:01:04] Vanessa I: Today we're very excited to introduce our guest, Karen Chan, Group Chief Commercial Officer for AirAsia Aviation Group. Welcome, Karen. 

[00:01:13] Karen C: Hello to both Vanessas and listeners of the Career Transition podcast. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm really honored to be sharing some of my experiences in career transitions.

[00:01:24] Vanessa T: Excellent. Welcome to the show, Karen. Now Karen Chan is Group Chief Commercial Officer for AirAsia Aviation Group, overseeing network expansion and planning, route revenue management, marketing, sales, and distribution across the aviation group. Prior to this. Karen was CEO of Minden International Holdings, a Temasek backed venture leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning to build a data led, insights driven platform.

Karen is a veteran of AirAsia. Having led the transformation of AirAsia. com as CEO from an online ticketing platform into AirAsia Super App, the ASEAN travel and lifestyle platform. Karen is also serving as member of the board of QSR Brands Holdings as independent non executive director. She is also sitting on the board of Bata Malaysia as independent non executive director, and is a member of the board of Air Asia Aviation Management Services as executive director, Karen has over 20 years of experience in digital and retail consulting. Prior to joining Air Asia, Karen was the Senior Vice President of Digital for C N J Clark Asia Pacific, middle East Africa, and Chief Digital Officer of Pizza Hutt, Asia Pacific.

Championing efforts in digital transformation and omni channel engagement with consumers. She holds a degree in Bachelor's of Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Master's in Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales in Australia.

And throughout her career, Karen has moved around the world along with her husband and her 10 year old son. And she's lived in countries across Asia Pacific, in Australia, China, Singapore, and now Malaysia. Wow, it's so great to have you on our show today, Karen. Welcome to our show. 

[00:03:28] Karen C: Thank you. 

[00:03:29] Vanessa I: Karen, throughout your life and career, you've made some very important transition, moving between several different countries with your family, building your career, and taking on increasingly challenging leadership roles.

Which of these transitions would you say is the most transformational in your journey? 

[00:03:47] Karen C: Indeed, Vanessa, if anyone looks at my CFI, you can either call it rich or diverse, or you can also call it very checkered and nonlinear. I've actually worked across multinational companies, pre IPO companies, startups, across manufacturing, fast food, footwear, global investments, and now airlines.

In fact, I still recall when I left Colgate when I was in Australia to join Coca Cola in Hong Kong. The farewell speech of my ex boss was, now Karen has decided to go and ruin her teeth and join a carbonated sugar syrup company. But I think what's really constant across all these transition is the opportunity for me to continue to go and build up my technical skill sets and the opportunity to go and challenge my growing leadership strength.

So I think that is what I always look for when I actually consider moving or transitioning from one position, one industry to another. And if you ask me what is a really significant transition for myself, my background, maybe in the past 10 years of my career, has always been in traditional marketing. I then decided to go and bite the bullet and join Domino's Pizza, which was more into digital marketing.

And since then, I had been able to go and open a lot of different roles in digital transformation, and that was basically one of the more pivotal change in career from traditional marketing to digital transformation. So I can share a little bit about what I did in that particular role. When I joined Domino's, Domino's have always been a pizza company that positioned itself as we are a tech company that so happens to sell pizza.

They have over 30, 000 stores in the world and they are very, very focused. Their sole DNA is about delivering pizzas in 30 minutes to home. There's no frills. It's always about the basic pizzas. But how do they go and optimize delivery in 30 minutes? When I joined Asia Pacific was a very, very new upstart in Hong Kong, and we need to go and start scaling across multiple markets.

Not only do we need to go and scale physical stores, the most important piece is how do you actually have the return on investment when you actually start building one online store that can service 50, 100, 150, 500 physical stores. That was where the game changer is. In basically building one virtual store that can then go and service all your physical hub.

And to me, because I was actually coming from a traditional marketing background, I didn't really know much about the backend. When I first started, I thought marketing or digital marketing is about improving customer engagement, having more posts on social media, making sure that your website actually doesn't have a lot of lag time, can have very good conversion.

That is only one part of the story. The gist of operational excellence is what actually makes a difference in digital performance. Is your store able to actually go and have fast in fast out for your orders? Not only do you now need to go and handle dine in orders, takeaway orders, now you have a new channel in online.

How is your kitchen management system supporting that? More importantly, how are you able to optimize your finite number of drivers to deliver to home your pizzas, to go and cater for growth? And that's when I start actually, instead of working in the office or talking to my programmers, I spent about six months working in a store, understanding the in and outs of making a pizza.

How can we actually make a pizza in less than one minute so that the majority of the 29 minutes is actually used in servicing our customer well. 

[00:07:37] Vanessa T: That was quite a big transformation, Karen, that you made moving from traditional marketing to digital marketing. So may I ask, what made you want to make this kind of a change?

[00:07:49] Karen C: I've always been asked this question, you know, and I think there are three key things. When you look at whether it is leadership or career transition, and I just try to go and encapsulate it in three A's. The first is attitude, the second is aptitude, and the third is appreciation. I think for me, my attitude is I am a risk taker.

I love doing transitions because for me, digital skill sets are so transferable. It's so scalable. It doesn't matter what industries you go to. In the end, the key attributes and the KPIs are all the same. Can you actually deliver on conversion? Can you actually deliver on re-engagement? And how do you actually continue to increase your ticket?

Whether it's an airline ticket, a pizza ticket, or, you know, a meal ticket. So for me, when I talk about attitude, I like to go and challenge myself because I'm not somebody who likes to live in a comfort zone. So I think that's for me. But when I talk about attitude, it's always about the belief in yourself.

A lot of the time, the reason why we're being held back in career transition or the next promotion, for women, a lot of the times it's about self doubt. I don't think I'm actually good enough. You know, should I really put my hand up? Especially for Chinese female, right? We have always been taught since young to be nice, to be demure, do not go and argue.

I guess I've always been one of the black sheep in the company because I don't believe in that. I think when you are not very sure, you go and say, Hey, you know what? I'm ready for the next challenge. I think I've always shared with Vanessa as well. Something that my mentor, Tony Fernandez always taught me.

Karen, when you are not sure, just say yes. And I think this has been a mantra for me, right? The attitude is about being a risk taker. Do you have a fixed mindset or do you have a growth mindset? Growth always means taking risks, always means being uncertain, and always means being able to work agile. So I think that's one thing that actually drives me a lot.

[00:09:49] Vanessa T: You also mentioned aptitude and appreciation. Do you want to touch a little bit on that? 

[00:09:54] Karen C: Yeah. I think aptitude is basically the word for ability, right? To me, I think what is really critical when you career transition is about your aptitude in expression and aptitude in communications. A lot of the times you might be excellent in execution, but nobody knows about it because somebody else in the team or your boss actually takes all the glory.

Hence, I also talk about appreciation. Go and recognize people where it is due. But let me go and deliver a little bit more on aptitude. Aptitude can be about technical skill sets. When I have to go and change from traditional marketing to basically, Digital marketing. Did I actually take a course in Python?

I didn't, but I know enough to be able to go and challenge back my programmers, my data scientists, to be able to go and have a healthy, constructive, productive conversation on delivering the direction and the vision that I need. So I think what is really important is you may not actually be the technical expert, but you need to go and have enough technical verbatim to lead a technical team, especially cross functionally. 

In terms of expression and communication, I think storytelling is very important. The higher you go in the organization is not how beautiful you can actually do your Google Slides or how amazing your macro Excel sheets are. It's about how you can actually go and distill the problem statements into action points into your achievements in very, very simple five minutes conversation when you actually meet up with your CEO or your chairman of the board.

So I think able to go and train yourself. Learn how to go and communicate well, learn to be forceful when you are being challenged, learn to be able to go and push back when you do not agree. I think these are very crucial skill sets, whether it's in an executive position or as a female leader. 

The third piece is about appreciation. That's something that women are so good at. I think women have natural affinity in showing appreciation, recognizing other females, and building networks. That's basically a natural tendency of women. So how do we actually leverage on this natural instinct to build a very strong team around you? Because I've realized that the higher you go, especially when you're a CEO, it is not about how brilliant you are, but it's about how brilliant your team is.

You cannot do everything. How do you go and call out people who deserve recognition, even when they are minus two, when they are minus three? You need to go and build a very strong C suite team, but more importantly, how do you identify high potentials and you recognize them? Because recognition goes very, very far.

[00:12:34] Vanessa I: This is very interesting, the part on appreciation, because this is the first time it's coming into our series of podcasts. So I was wondering when do you think Karen, this concept of appreciation came into your vocabulary or came into the landscape as something very critical for you to be successful as a leader?

[00:12:53] Karen C: I learned it in my pizza days. And I still recall as a global pizza company and, you know, from Domino's I then moved to Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut really values family. So I still recall when I was invited to join a global conference. And my husband was also invited to join the gala dinner. The CEO of that time, when he opened the floor for the gala dinner, he said, I would like all the spouses to stand up.

And my husband was a little bit surprised, right? And the CEO then said, I would first like to go and recognize all the spouses in this room. Because without all of you, All my staff will not be able to travel and work as hard as they could have. So I think that was basically a big lesson for me. How do you go and recognize all the unsung heroes?

And that can be your partner. That can be your husband. That can also be your helper in your family who allows us to do what we are doing. The second example is also in Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut have something called the Hall of Fame. In every single store, and we are talking about a Pizza Hut store, they may only have five to six people, they have a hall of fame, what do they do?

Every time senior management goes to maybe, say, a foreign country, Japan, India, Vietnam, to go and visit, our leadership team will always bring a small gift. It might be a box of chocolate. It might be basically, you know, a plague. And then what we would then do is we would go and recognize, not the store manager, but maybe the janitor who's cleaning the toilet, to go and say, thank you for a job well done.

Because without you, our toilets would not be clean. There will be a hygiene issue and consumer perception about Pizza Hut would change. So I've actually learned a lot across many, many companies, but in terms of really showing appreciation down to basically your front liners, who are basically your ambassadors.

When you're talking about food delivery, your driver, who may actually be slaving away eight hours on the road. How do you go and recognize them? That's where I learned it. And now I put it as part of my DNA. I have town hall on a monthly basis. I institutionalize it. I will go and fork out the money so that every single HOD in my team will then go and give an ang pow, you know, a red packet on a monthly basis.

We cover 16 countries every month is so easy to go and find someone to recognize. And I want to go and instill that into also my second-in-charge, right, that it is not about what we do at a group level, at a regional level. It is about those who are actually working in market, having to go and deal with customer complaints day in day out when we have refund issues, when we have rescheduling cancellation of flight issues.

So these are things that I actually hold very, very close to my heart. And we also started having our own Hall of Fame. Obviously, I tell my staff, when next month you cannot hit the target, the Hall of Fame will become the Hall of Shame. So, you know, it's always lighthearted, but it's also genuine. 

[00:15:46] Vanessa I: Very good. Very interesting. Thank you so much for sharing this very concrete example. So with Vanessa Teo, we have been looking into the career transition as a concept, and we have found one important moment which can happen to all of us, which is a derailment, which is when we are not aligned with what we are supposed to do, we can derail and we can be off track to a certain extent.

So we were wondering, Karen, if there was any derailing moment that you had yourself, and if you could share with us about that moment and what you learned from it, most of all. 

[00:16:20] Karen C: Vanessa, I think I have derailing moments every day in my life. You know, when you think things are going well, somehow there will be other problems that pop up.

But I think in terms of career transition, one key thing that I've actually learned is obviously everybody wants to go and have career transition that is vertical, rather than horizontal. And I was basically approached for one opportunity. whereby it was a significant promotion for me to become the most senior within the region for digital transformation.

And I was quite tempted by this particular title and I accepted the offer. And this particular company was a family based organization, over 200 years history, trying to digitally transform from within. I've realized that it is very difficult when the whole fabric and the DNA of the organization is about tradition.

It's about artisanal mastery. It's about touch and feel. So, when you actually try to go and convince your leadership team, your CEO, the board members who have never really traveled outside of their country, that, hey, we need to go and have closed loop wallet for payment as an alternative. We need to go and start talking about automation of the way we actually engage with our customers.

We need to talk about scalability. How do we go and track marketing spend instead of just spending on TV? It was a very difficult challenge, and it's not foreign to me because for any digital transformation, the first thing you transform is not your IT system. It is about mindset. You are tasked to be the change agent and you need to go and work across multiple functions to go and change people's way of behaving because there will always be resistance.

Take for instance, I have always been selling pizzas. Now you are asking me to go and sacrifice my restaurant revenue to go and move it to online. Somebody's P& L is being touched, and that's why to me, the derailing moment for me was when I understood that digital transformation was more just a look good pillar on the strategic roadmap rather than actually having buy in from the board.

That's when I realized that it is not going to work. So what did I try to do, but in the end it still didn't work. When I realized that none of the board members are even conversant in digital. None of them even have an Instagram account. Most of them are basically still using Visa MasterCard instead of basically a wallet.

I decided to invite the youngest board member who actually have a passport to come with me to China. And I took that particular board member to visit Alibaba, their campus in Hangzhou, for three days. We went to a particular special room called the Ninth Cloud, whereby it was Alibaba's future vision of having a completely virtual world.

Being able to go and support farmers in the most remote countryside in China to be able to sell online. Being able to have education for some of what we call basically the kept at home children in China, whereby their parents have gone and work in Shenzhen or some other coastal provinces. And she was blown away because I need to go and start having ambassador from within.

I cannot just basically be one person trying to go and champion digital transformation. So. I was also able to go and prove that, you know, as a result of having a closed loop wallet, I was able to go and drive 200 million cells in 24 hours for the single stay in China. Unfortunately, it was short lived.

That particular board member then moved on, and it was back to square one. And I then have to make a call, do I want to spend another 18 months trying to do the same thing again or should I go and look at, you know, other opportunities and I've taken the latter. 

[00:20:06] Vanessa I: Okay. What I hear from you, Karen, is the fact that your moment of derailment was facing an organization that didn't have enough digital savviness.

And would you say that in the future, the way you would do it differently is maybe to assess the company you would join, for instance, differently in order for you not to have this experience again? I mean, what would you change based on that? 

[00:20:29] Karen C: I think if I look at what are basically the takeaways, right, from this, there are two key points.

The first is self examination. What was I actually after when I decided to join this company? Was it basically a title, you know, enhancement, you know, was it basically the salary? And I was actually chasing for the next promotion. Hence, I didn't actually study enough about the cultural fit of the organization.

I think a lot of companies who are going through digital transformation, their senior management may really not have the digital savviness. Hence, that's why they want to hire, you know, a professional to go and bring that in. But it's really about the sincerity. Is there really a top down determination to go and see that through?

Or was it really something whereby they just put it on their wall to go and say, Hey, you know, just digital transformation is a nice to have, but not a must have. Yeah. 

[00:21:20] Vanessa T: Karen, just listening to what you've been doing to break down boundaries and enter into these new spaces is really inspirational. You've also broken down boundaries, entering into senior leadership roles as a woman and also into board roles, where we know that the percentage of women in board roles is actually very small in comparison to our male counterparts.

Can you speak a little bit about that, entering into board roles and what that type of a transition has been like for you? 

[00:21:49] Karen C: It's actually been very challenging. I think, you know, as just listening to me, I'm somebody that's really passionate, you know, I am a go getter. I'm very results oriented. In an executive role, that's perfect because that's what you need, right, to go and drive the organization and execute well.

However, when you are actually in a board role, I have to constantly remind myself that I am no longer in the driver's seat. I am actually in an advisory role, and I need to go and take a step back to go and give breathing space to the executive team to go and execute. My role is not to go and tell them, hey, this is where you need to go from zero to hero.

My role is to go and say, this is a roadmap that you have to go from zero to hero. Now let's go and look at what are some of the areas that we can actually further support or comment, right, or experiences from other organizations that we can actually then go and bring in. And it has been very tough.

There are so many situations in boards whereby I have to go and check myself. Instead of being very directive, it's really about questioning, and I'm still honing that skill. Questioning the executive team, why they decided to do what they wanted to do, and when they think that they would be able to go and deliver the result that they're presenting back to the board.

So I think it's a huge change in mindset for myself personally. The other piece that you mentioned, obviously, is that I am new to all these boards because I'm new to sitting on boards. And when you need to go and manage the dynamics between shareholders who basically own the organization, senior management team who thinks they're doing a fabulous job, also directors who may have been in the organization for over 15 years, 20 years, and now somebody, a newbie like myself coming in.

I have a lot of self doubt. I also have to go and keep telling myself, you have a right to be here because they have chosen you. Do not be shy, do not be diffident when you want to go and challenge a particular direction or particular paper that has been put in front of you, especially in terms of digital.

The CTO might actually be there for 20 years, but there's a reason why the board have chosen to join so that you can bring a different perspective. So I keep telling myself that you have already earned your position to be on this board, do and deliver and value add. So these are things that I continue to learn.

[00:24:11] Vanessa I: That's very good. Thank you so much for sharing. I think it's going to be very useful for the people who listen to the podcast because it's so rare for us to have a female who are on board like you. So thank you for sharing. So now we would like to talk a little bit more personally about your transition.

As Vanessa Teo mentioned, you have moved across border many times with your family. I was wondering what was it like for you to get your family on board and how was it like to transition to new countries and to adjust to your new environment with your husband and your son? 

[00:24:45] Karen C: Yeah, for me, we always talk about work life balance and I'm not sure if balance is actually the right word in these days.

To me, it's more about work life integration. How do you actually prioritize? What is it that you are willing to empower to maybe your husband or your helper in the house to go and do on your behalf? And what are some of the things that you want to prioritize in your life? So to me, every time when I decide to whether it is relocation or moving, you know, changing jobs, moving country, I definitely have a lot of discussion with my family, especially with my husband.

Now, my son is 10 years old. He is 10 turning on 20. So I also go and seek his opinion when I decide to go and move. I think a lot of the times it goes back to the same thing. The first A is about your attitude. Do you believe in yourself that if you decide to go and move to the next room, you're going to learn a lot more, you are going to continue to excel, and that as a result of that, your family will benefit from it.

So an example that I would share is that I have never attended a single PTA in my son's life. I've never attended a single physical PTA. My husband normally does that. Is that a good and bad thing? I think it's actually a positive thing because I have a son. When he goes through this particular period from the teenage years or the in betweens, right, the in between teens, the role model is a father.

For the father to be actually in person, to go to a PTA, to speak to the teacher, to talk about how he can be a much better rounded person, not only in academic, but also about his sports. My husband loves sports, and the bonding between my son and my husband is skiing, going swimming, playing football. I think that is actually a good thing, to give the opportunity to my husband to have that special role.

To be basically the one facing the teacher and to go and bond with my son in that way. How do I then go and understand how is my son doing academically? I do it digitally. First day of the school, I will always be there to drop off my son. But then I'll actually go and, you know, start emailing the teacher.

How is my son going? I would actually go and start having weekly, sometimes monthly, email correspondence to go and share with the teacher what Joshua is actually doing outside of school. He just won a piano competition. I share photos. And so I have a different avenue. Women are so good at self guilting, right?

That I can't even turn up. Every coffee meeting are basically just mothers. And my husband stood up like a sore thumb. In fact, he stopped going because it's a bit embarrassing. When they talk about the school kissy being 500 ringgit instead of 50, 000 that my husband, you know, manages. So these are things that we need to go and have a decision, what do we prioritize, but I'm sure that if you talk to my husband, he may have a very, very different, you know, conversation with you both, Vanessas, about, you know, how they feel and uprooting the family.

But I have to say that I would not be where I am without my husband's support. And without my son being able to adapt to new environments. And you never know whether your son can adapt or not until you put them through the situation whereby they have to move country every year. And I think it's a good thing.

[00:27:59] Vanessa T: Well, it certainly sounds like you've also had some very clearly defined roles between you and your husband and who and how you would be managing things at home. Things at the school and each one of you taking very different roles. So kudos to that for having very clearly defined that with your, your husband.

I think that certainly helps. Now Karen, when you think back through your earlier years as a working mom, I'm sure we have many audience members as well, who are perhaps just transitioning into life as a working mom, but what advice would you give to working moms?

[00:28:34] Karen C: I think there are a few things that, you know, are key anchors and principles in my life that allows me to still work and then still have a family and I still have one husband and, you know, my child.

So I guess the three, the three things that I actually hold quite dearly to in life. The first thing is my faith. There are so many ups and downs in life, right? Look at the past three years in COVID. So faith has been very critical to both my spiritual and my physical well being. Every time I moved to a new country.

The first home I look for is my spiritual home. It's not my physical home. When I moved to Malaysia, I was struggling for a while to find a church that I can actually go and take my, my family to, and that my son can have very good Sunday school. So we move around for a bit. And finally I found the right church this year.

So the first thing is basically my faith. The second thing is basically my friends. Do you actually have a very close group of friends that no matter whether you have a terrible day or, you know, you just became the CEO of another company, they can still tell you the truth. And the older I get is not really in the quantum, but it's really in the quality of the friends you have.

One of my best friends is in Australia and she will always tell me the truth. I can say, hey, guess what? You know, I just got this bonus. Ha ha ha. Aren't I great. And she'll say, 'Karen, are you giving enough time to Joshua? You keep pushing him for piano. Does he really like it? What can you do better to go and enjoy these sessions with him?'

And my best friend in Australia was the one to go and start encouraging me to go and play piano together four hands with my son. And those are bonding time. So I really think that is important. Not only do you need to go and keep friends who can really tell you the truth, but also be able to go and make new friends in every new country that you go to.

And then I think for working moms, right? The most important thing is basically your mental and your physical sanity. You know, I go and do yoga and pilates to detox, not just my body, but also to detox my brain. Because when you are in some crazy position, the only thing you can think about is just breathe in and breathe out.

And I think there are many, many moments in life at work. That all you should be doing is just to breathe in and breathe out to go and get you through. People think, oh, you know, if you are actually at a particular level, it's really about your competency. No, it's not. It's also about how you look. You both have come from beauty industry.

When you look terrible, you feel terrible. That's why I totally support women to go and do any micro, you know, adjustment aesthetics, because when you feel good about yourself, You can do a lot of good.

[00:31:13] Vanessa I: I thank you so much, Karen, for sharing all this learnings that you had over the years. So I was wondering, you know, because we covered so much ground today, if you had three key points that you wanted our audience to remember, what would it be?

[00:31:27] Karen C: Recently, I've been listening to a particular life coach from Shanghai and, um, she used three Chinese words. Maybe I can say it in Chinese and then I can translate it into English. There's nine Chinese words that every female should remember. 

The first three words is 我重要, I'm important. 我值得, I'm worth it. 我可以, Because I can. I think for all of us, right? We go through many, many self doubts. We go through a lot of challenges. We just need to go and tell ourselves that we are important. Don't let anybody tell you that your family, your son, your husband is more important than you. Because if you cannot do well, your family cannot do well.

So we are important enough to prioritize ourselves first. The second part is I'm worthy. When you have a particular promotion or when you are basically asked to go and do something to lead a project, don't go and doubt whether I can or I cannot. People ask you because they see something in you and you are worthy to go and take on that promotion or that new title or that particular bonus.

Don't try to go and say, Oh, you know, I don't think I can really do it. And the first thing is about believing yourself because we all can. 

[00:32:37] Vanessa T: Thank you so much, Karen. That was really, really excellent and so succinctly summarized for our audience, the three key points about career transitions for you. Thank you so much, Karen, for joining us today on our Career Transitions podcast and for sharing with us your very invaluable advice.

You're certainly a role model to so many women out there, and we certainly want to continue to wish you all the very best as you continue to transform the world of technology and travel at AirAsia. Thank you so much for joining us today, Karen. 

[00:33:12] Karen C: Thank you for having me. Last word, if you're not sure. Just say yes.

[00:33:19] Vanessa T: Thank you so much, Karen. And thanks everyone for joining us today on the Career Transitions Podcast. Thank you, everyone.