It is with immense sadness that we share the news of our dear colleague, Professor Jeremy Goh’s untimely passing away on Wednesday night. Jeremy was a founding member of the finance area. His notable appointments include founding area head of finance from 2001-2005, finance area coordinator from 2008-2013, and SMU Faculty Senate Chair from 2012-2018. In the school's early years, he recruited many promising scholars from top institutions through his vision for a research-oriented department. He also built a nurturing and collegial environment in which junior faculty could grow and do their best work. Through his leadership and institution-building, he shaped the finance area into a highly respected department that excelled in both research and teaching. One of the initiatives he started was the annual Finance Summer Research Camp, which continues to this day.
Jeremy was a true academic social entrepreneur. He was instrumental in initiating and forging many partnerships for Masters’ programs between LKCSB and other institutions like his alma mater, Washington University of St Louis (Global Master of Finance program), Caas Business School (Master of Quantitative Finance) among others. He was the founding Co-Director at the Centre for Corporate and Investor Responsibility (CCIR) in the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics, and he developed a corporate governance index that was used for Singapore Corporate Governance Awards in collaboration with SIAS. He was also a Founding Principal Investigator for the Citi-Foundation SMU (CFS) Financial Literacy Program for Young Adults, one of the longest funded programs under Citi Foundation USA. The CFS program was a pioneering Peer-to-Peer Train-the-Trainer Program, the first structured program for financial literacy in Singapore, which trained over 1,600 student trainers and reached out to over 100,000 beneficiaries. As a faculty advisor and mentor, he organized the global fiesta for Citibank employees as well as multiple rounds of in-person and hybrid MyMoney@Campus with secondary schools, ITE’s, Polytechnics and AU’s, thereby permanently shaping the financial literacy landscape in Singapore.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, we wish them fortitude in this hour of grief.
Bert De Reyck
Dean
Lee Kong Chian School of Business
