Kai Foong Tan

Kai Foong is a Lecturer, Leadership Development Practice Director and Leadership Consultant at INSEAD. She co-directs the MBA Personal Leadership Development Program in the Singapore campus and acts as a faculty coach supervisor at the INSEAD Coaching Certificate since it first launched. In her various roles at INSEAD, Kai Foong designs coaching interventions, manages and supervises coaches, and delivers coaching herself.

Kai Foong has worked with senior business leaders globally (CEOs/Presidents) of Fortune 500/Global 1000 organisations across technology, financial services, building and cement industry, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and retail over two decades. Her specialty lies in the area of change and transition in the context of executive coaching, assessment, and development of leaders. Her current portfolio of work revolves around coaching senior leaders and their management teams to be more self-aware, agile, and resilient in this complex and dynamic world we live in.

In coaching, she brings a systems psychodynamic lens, focusing on helping the leader connect with their identity in role, appreciate the systemic context in which they lead, and develop capacity in seeing and adapting their behaviours in the face of change. In working with management teams, she helps the team connect with their purpose in the environment they operate, develop capacity to reflect on team patterns that aid and stop them from being effective. Developing reflective capacity in both individuals and teams and thereafter more choice and versatility underlies the core of her work.

Kai Foong has extensive experience as a consultant psychologist and business leader at PDI Ninth House (PDINH), now acquired by Korn Ferry, a global leadership consulting firm. She was also the Director of Coaching for the Centre for Leadership and Cultural Intelligence at the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University for several years before pursuing a portfolio career track.

Kai Foong is a Registered Psychologist in Singapore. She holds a Masters in Occupational Psychology (Merit) from the University of London, a Masters in Business from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a Bachelors of Social Science (2nd upper Honours) in Psychology from the National University of Singapore. In her spare time, Kai Foong pursues art and photography, as it teaches her patience, persistence and different ways of “seeing”.