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principal, Tunku Abdul Rahman College, Malaysia

Yoong Lai Thye's energy knows no bounds. A vibrant woman at the leading edge of accounting education, she paved the way for the introduction of the Malaysian variant papers for law and taxation for the ACCA qualification. This made the examinations even more relevant to and popular with students in Malaysia. Yoong describes a typical ACCA member as being 'highly competent in technical knowledge and professional skills,' and this essentially describes her own level of attainment.

Currently the principal of Tunku Abdul Rahman College, Yoong moved up the career ladder with her own definite style and determination. Before returning to lecture at her alma mater college, and to widen her scope of experience, she took advantage of the international mobility of the ACCA qualification by working as an audit assistant at Price Waterhouse & Co in Birmingham, UK.

Her greatest satisfaction these days comes from graduation ceremonies where she sees 'the joyous faces of graduates, parents and loved ones, especially students who have succeeded through extraordinary challenging circumstances.'

'Achieving qualification allowed me to be flexible in my career and advance from commercial sector to audit practice, then to education and management,' she says. 'Its international recognition allowed me also to gain employment here in Malaysia and in the UK.'

Yoong was accepted for admission to the University of Birmingham, UK, to pursue a Masters of Social Science (Accounting). She is also the proud recipient of the Colombo Plan Scholarship, which she received to complete her post-graduate studies.

A visionary in her own college, Yoong sees the next 100 years as an era where there will be total integration of information technology in the accounting profession. She stresses the need for proactive and continued commitment to deal with rapid changes and challenges in line with technology and the evaluation of the knowledge economy.