Creator Of Communities

By building spaces that bring likeminded people together, Michelle Yong redefines her family’s traditional construction business.

- Karen Tee

It began with the desire to help her boxing coach and osteopath start their own businesses. But Michelle Yong did not know how she could add value, so she had to go about connecting the dots herself.

The fourth generation director of boutique real estate developer Aurum Group decided to dive right into the concept of co-working spaces. Yong had already spotted a gap in this nascent market, and her family – who owns Woh Hup Holdings, one of Singapore’s largest privately owned construction companies – had been encouraging her to seek out other growth opportunities to diversify the business. Aurum is a subsidiary of Woh Hup.

This was in 2015, before premium coworking spaces like WeWork or The Great Room had made a splash in Singapore. “Since we are great at building spaces, how about taking it to the next level by building communities,” says the 40-year-old. “I wanted to bring together the corporate business world that I represent with the start-up world to create opportunities.”

At the time, the property sector was softening and Yong, who had been spearheading Aurum Land’s main business of developing boutique residential properties such as the award-winning 1919 on Sophia Road and Three 11 on Upper Thomson Road, thought it would be a good time to branch out. In 2016, she launched