In Her Nature

Scion of conglomerate YTL Group and sustainability leader Ruth Yeoh knows all too well about the opportunities and challenges of transiting into renewable energy and championing environmental stewardship. She chats with Yanni Tan about her ever-expanding portfolio, and how the pandemic shook things up.

One cannot speak to Ruth Yeoh about sustainability without understanding just how wide and influential her remit is within her family empire, the Malaysia-based, multi-national, and multi-sector YTL Group. While Yeoh is based here with her nuclear family and serves as the executive director of real estate firm YTL Singapore, she is essentially the driving force behind the whole group's ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) vision.

The eldest child of Malaysian business tycoon Francis Yeoh and granddaughter of late billionaire Yeoh Tiong Lay, Ruth Yeoh is a longtime philanthropist and environmentalist who has not stopped championing her family's love of nature and community since her early 20s when she joined her family business.

The architecture graduate's achievements in sustainability, among others, is an extraordinarily long list. At just 24, she founded the corporation's Environmental Division, which later became the broader Group Sustainability Division, which she still heads. In 2006, she set up YTL-SV Carbon, a carbon credit consultancy, also led by her. In 2007, she published her first book on the topic. Over the years, she has also participated in countless global and company environmental initiatives.

With YTL Group's expansion over the past two decades, it now runs nine business units from construction to technology to hospitality across three continents. All of them take direction, and inspiration, from Yeoh on ESG matters. She discusses the broad strokes her family business has taken and highlights the leadership YTL Group has demonstrated in the post-pandemic world.

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