Name
Robert Meyer
Time at GESS
1978-1992
Graduation
1992
What has your learning journey been like after GESS?
Upon graduation I went to Germany. I lived in Singapore most of my life. We moved here when I was less than a year old, so this was my first real stay in Germany beyond extended holidays. I moved to Hamburg where I interned as an apprentice with Dresdner Bank – now part of Commerzbank – from ’93 to ’95. Afterwards, I stayed on in Germany to do my business degree at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel from ’95 to ’99 and then I came back to Singapore.
What do you currently do?
I am currently a full time investor. I started my career in our family business which has since been sold. My initial roles was to promote German products in Asia. I was one of the batch of people who moved around with a suitcase full of catalogues, materials and samples to Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and so forth. I then started a venture company in 2005 which ultimately ended being a stock-listed company here in Singapore; I ran that up until last year. I retired from this company middle of last year. Since then I have become a full-time investor running my family’s business.
Could you tell us more about BluCurrent, a project that we heard you are working on with a former GESS board member?
Yes, absolutely. As an investor I try to find the right people in the right opportunity at the right time and one of those opportunities is Singapore Aquaculture Technologies, a digital fish farm here run by a couple of Germans, incidentally. One of them used to be on the board of GESS, Dr. Dirk Eichelberger. He is a friend and he had this really exciting idea together with his business partner, Dr. Michael Voigtmann. I was lucky to be at the right place and to support them, so I am both an investor as well as a director in that company. There, we farm tropical fish, four species at the moment: Barramundi, Snapper, Grouper and Threadfin. We farm them in tanks on a floating platform with a fully digitised farming system that allows us to have much higher productivity, lower operating costs and produce fish which is not treated with antibiotics. That is the kind of food you want to be eating. This is really the only animal protein that you can produce at scale in Singapore. So that is a really exciting project. I met Dirk, the CEO, through my wife when my wife was on the Board of Governors at GESS. So this is a GESS baby, if you so will.
Could you share how your family has been part of the GESS community in many different ways over the past years?
Sure. I have many good memories of GESS. I think GESS is a wonderful school, especially in the Primary School, simply because it was perhaps a little more like a village school, especially when the old campus was still at Jalan Jurong Kechil. My wife is Singaporean Chinese, but we decided that we wanted our kids to go into the European Schooling System and what better way to start than at GESS? They have since moved on. As they came out of Primary School, we felt that the Anglo-Saxon Secondary School System offers great opportunities. They, therefore, switched to an English School with the ultimate aim of going to the UK to boarding school which is where my son is now and where my daughter will be going next summer. My wife, in her role as caring mother, felt a strong calling to support the school, initially as a volunteer, as a parent rep. One thing led to another and she then spent I think three or four years on the Board.
What is your favourite memory of your time at GESS?
My favourite memory of GESS comprises of two things: one, was the move from Chatsworth Avenue to Bukit Tinggi. We helped to carry furniture into the teachers’ rooms, we helped with the IT system – it was very basic, but still there was an IT system – and it really meant a lot to us that we had this input. We had a stake in the school and we knew every nook and cranny of the school. For students to be able to say that “I helped move the school into these premises” is an unusual thing and that was great.
The other thing I remember very fondly were our class trips. We were in Bali, we were in Kuching, Eastern Malaysia, Tioman, we had some really good times. And of course in those days there was no telephone so being away meant being away. We, therefore, had 7 days of really uninterrupted fun which was an experience I still treasure until today.
Do you think your time at GESS had an impact on your life?
I think GESS had a big impact on my life, a positive impact! Mostly because of the teachers. In the most important years for me, going from grade 9 to 13, (Abitur was in Grade 13 in those days), I had an exceptional group of teachers. We had an art teacher, Christoph Wiegand, who taught me how to take apart a text. Since this was pre-online formatting he would take a pair of scissors and would cut the paragraphs out and reformat the whole thing. The text was then completely different. Editing, especially for precision and content, is something that has been very important to my life having written lots of business plans and having read lots of documents. That is a skill that I really trace back to GESS.
Another is my curiosity. When I say I am excited about the future, it is because I want to know what lies ahead. I am a person who is naturally very curious. We had a science teacher in those days, Herr Lechner, who was at the same time the principal, but also taught Geography and Biology – sensational! He had little slides that he had on a slide carousel projector. Herr Lechner had lived in the Middle East, he had travelled extensively all over the world and was an avid photographer. He must have had – I am guessing – 10,000 slides. Our Geography lessons were based on these slides, so we would be looking at the slides and he would be telling us about rock formations, about the cultures, the people – whatever the topic was – but it was supported by what in those days was highly unusual: really personal interactive media. This was of course pre-internet.
We also had a history teacher, Wolfgang Hinners, who was unusually international. He had studied in America, I think, and he had been all around the world as well. He had a very keen interest in geopolitics, so we went through post-World War II global affairs, not just from a textbook perspective, but from a media clip perspective. So he would teach us what the media was writing about JFK’s assassination, Watergate, whatever our topic was, using media clips (newspaper clippings in those days) rather than using textbooks. Until today geopolitics and macro awareness is a very important thing in what I do. So I think the curiosity as well as being aware that you can actually impact things, that it really is down to you – I learned that at GESS.
Is there any piece of advice or any experience you would like to share with current GESS students?
My advice to current GESS students would be to make the most of what Singapore offers. When I was around 14 or 15, I did my first two-week internship in a company, a shipping company. Coincidentally, it is in the same building where my office is in now. But even though I did not do much other than manage stamps, sort their mail, count the stamps at the end of the night, make coffee, that sort of stuff, I do not think that that sort of exposure was commonplace in other places in those days. Singapore is very small. Everybody knows somebody who can help you. Whether it is cultural exposure, get to speak the language, get to know what are the values and the social norms that form Singapore which are highly complex. If it is business exposure, if you want to intern at a company, if you want to come work at our fish farm: drop us a line. Those sort of experiences, I would encourage to take on as much as possible. Because once you leave GESS and perhaps Singapore, the world is much bigger, and perhaps not as easy to (access) those sorts of experiences.
You are a GESS Alumni and would like to share your memories of GESS with us? Please email us at alumni@gess.sg. We would love to get to know you!
