Lai Thoe has served spent 25 years of her Public Service career at the International Enterprise Singapore Board (formerly known as the Trade Development Board) and SPRING Singapore, both statutory bodies under the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

In IE and SPRING, she worked closely with the industry trade associations to provide assistance to their members, mainly in the areas of capability building, productivity improvements, and internationalization. She was also a strong advocate of leveraging on technology to improve their businesses operations including the areas of customer relationship management, sales and marketing, financial management and human capital development.

In IE, she was also involved in the emergency preparedness work, in the areas of food emergency authority under MTI and the SARS taskforce.

She was also part of IE’s and SPRING’s delegations to the APEC SME Ministerial and WG meetings in Taiwan, People’s Republic of China, Vietnam and Peru.

She has also hosted and presented to delegations from Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, China and Bhutan, on topics ranging from SME development to leveraging on technology for government assistance and outreach channels.