This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 20, 2021 - December 26, 2021

Intel’s new managing director, A K Chong, has a reputation for getting things done. And she needed all her famed wherewithal when she took over the running of its Malaysian operations in August.

Chong was taking the helm during one of the most fraught periods in the company’s history, having to deal with the double whammy of an unprecedented pandemic, coupled with a sharp rise in demand for semiconductors around the world. Semiconductors are Intel’s core business.

Without fanfare, Chong, the first woman in the company’s history to take on this role in Malaysia, assumed leadership, finding out what needed to be done and then doing it. She brought a quiet capability to her role, the legacy of some 26 years spent in quality control, during which time, she received two Intel achievement awards for “pioneering ramp-readiness to achieve world-class manufacturing” and “reducing cycle time for factory certification”.

She also helped take the System Integration Manufacturing Services (SIMS) factory from a lab-based setting to a high-volume manufacturing environment. Last year, amid the chaos of the onset of the pandemic, she co-led her team to yet another award — the Intel Quality Award (one of the most prestigious awards within the company) for Assembly and Test Manufacturing for four factories. 

The Kedah-born engineer by training who landed in Intel in 1991 straight from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia had basically built a reputation of getting things done quickly and efficiently.

She admits that she got a lot of support from the entire organisation, which came together to figure out how best to support its employees during these challenging times. The solutions were practical and straight to the point.

“We helped set up ergonomic offices for them at home,” she says. “Like me, right now, I’m sitting on my ergo chair that can move up and down. Because this working from home is not a short-term thing, right? So, the ergonomic home office set-up has been very useful.”

The company also took the trouble to upgrade each employee’s WiFi benefit and provided allowances for childcare, online learning resources for parents — so that they could help their children with schoolwork — and eldercare support.

“We give emotional assistance because, during this time, there is a lot of anxiety. And we also give 12 wellness hours for the first half of 2021 and another 12 wellness hours for the second half. This is on top of their annual leave, because everybody has been working so hard.”

She assumed the role during the third Movement Control Order and set about to implement the company’s playbook with regard to worker safety and support — no small feat, with 12,000 employees working across assembly test manufacturing, product design and development, global shared services, as well as sales and marketing, not to mention an equally large number from Intel’s massive supply chain network to manage.

Intel Malaysia is celebrating its 50th anniversary next year. In May last year, Intel outlined its RISE programme, which will see it to 2030. “RISE” stands for responsible, inclusive, sustainable and enabling practices (see “Intel’s 2030 RISE strategy and corporate responsibility goals”).

“One of the 20 to 30 inclusive goals is doubling the number of women in leadership and executive roles and exceeding 40% of representation of women in technical positions,” she says.

Chong adds that this is a serious goal and not lip service. “Integrating gender inclusion is part and parcel of our culture, our performance management system and even our annual bonus metrics have an association with it.”

She adds that Intel Malaysia is ahead of the curve, already exceeding the 40% representation of women in technical roles. “We are on track to doubling the number of the women in senior leadership by 2030.”

At Intel Malaysia, she adds, 10 of the 46 principal engineers are women. “They have made a huge contribution to the community and society. One of them developed a programme called System Cloud for University programme, or SC4U, which helped university students get closer to their normal learning experience, and helped lecturers and students have remote access to Intel’s latest hardware and software through this dedicated cloud, so they can do tests and devise experiments without needing to be physically present in the lab.”

Chong is quick to point out that this is just one of the examples of female engineers prospering in the technology space.

She says Intel Malaysia has evolved since its early days and is much more gender-inclusive today. “We will keep our current gender-inclusive workplace and continue to attract, hire, retain and advance women in technical and leadership roles.”

In February, Pat Gelsinger, who has a reputation for being one of the most supportive, empathetic and passionate managers and executives Intel has ever had, took over as CEO. 

A month later, during the company’s global “Intel Unleashed: Engineering the Future” webcast, Gelsinger shared his vision for IDM 2.0, a major evolution of Intel’s integrated device manufacturing (IDM) model.

Among other things, he announced significant manufacturing expansion plans, starting with an estimated US$20 billion (RM84 billion) investment to build two new fabrication plants in Arizona, the US, as well as Intel’s plan to become a major provider of foundry capacity in the US and Europe.

Thus, Chong is taking on her role at a pivotal point for Intel globally. But it seems as if her career itself was carefully curated within the company to help her get to where she is now. 

She was hired in 1991 as a failure analysis engineer; her job was to find physical defects in the silicon of the chips, and debug them. 

“Although we studied a little bit of that in university, we were really unexposed to such high technology or what really happens in the industry,” she admits.

She had to spend a lot of time studying the architecture of the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer, but being comfortable with technology, she found the whole process fascinating. Also, Chong had the benefit of an assigned “buddy” and manager to show her the ropes.

“At Intel, when they hire you, they assign you a buddy for six months. This is the system that integrates you to make sure that you are able to understand the Intel culture and work habits … They even teach you how to do the job, to start with.”

Others may have found failure analysis a little onerous but, for Chong, it was very good training. “I learnt so much about the overall CPU architecture that it allowed me to do a fault isolation on the various process nodes.”

She remembers her early days in failure analysis quite fondly. “I was very fortunate to be involved in the failure analysis of products like the 486, which, at the time, was selling like hotcakes.”

She is referring to the Intel 486 microprocessor, a higher-performance follow-up to its highly popular 386 microprocessor, and the first one with an x86 chip to use more than a million transistors.

As Chong progressed, however, she found herself becoming more passionate about developing other people rather than solving engineering problems. “I started to see my role as developing my team members to make sure that each one of them could unleash their potential and become a shining star. It’s complex in a large organisation like this, but what makes a difference, apart from the technology, is the people.”

Chong is also very much involved in diversity and inclusion activities. “I am the founding chair of the women’s leadership development group. I am part of the steering council as well as the sponsor of our wing of Women at Intel. We have organised various activities to develop the women.”

For instance, the company has a mentoring circle, where the women gather as a group and share their common challenges. “We have a coaching process, as a group. They grow and progress to become leaders in the organisation.”

The challenges are broad-based and revolve around career progression, how to be better at their jobs and, of course, the perennial challenge of juggling between their roles at home and in the workplace.

With the pandemic and work-from-home situations, Chong avers that juggling has become a pretty popular topic even among the men. “Working fathers may have the same challenges, but these are more apparent for working mums, because society somehow defines women as the one with many hats — whether you are a primary caretaker for the children or for ageing parents while fulfilling your career.”

She speaks from experience. “My husband works in the oil and gas industry, so he is hardly at home, which leaves me to handle most of the duties in his absence.”

Fortunately, she adds, Intel allowed for flexible working hours so that mothers like her could juggle their time. “There is also the technology that we have now, where you can work from home and still connect very well, versus the old days where you didn’t have mobile phones or laptops, and had to be physically present to do the work.”

Chong advises women to build a good support system so that they can get help in a pinch. “I always ask for help from my relatives and my parents with things like watching the kids. And that helps a lot. It provides me with peace of mind when I’m at work.”

She says managing such a large organisation takes an incredible amount of discipline. Every minute has to be accounted for. When she started out, she made the typical rookie mistake of overbooking her schedule, not providing a buffer between meetings. Now, she knows better.

“I want to be proactive and plan my days at least two weeks ahead, but I need a buffer so that I can accommodate last-minute emergencies,” she points out. 

What is a typical day like for Chong? “I start my day at 5am and have about one hour to prepare myself, which includes having my breakfast and then commuting from Penang island to Kulim, where our factory is. That’s a one-hour drive. I get to the office around 7am and then I have conference calls with the US.”

Once a week after the morning calls, she takes a walk around the factory to see what is happening on the floor and talk to the employees on the line. Then, she has lunch in the cafeteria, where the company provides free food for all workers who have to be on site and cannot work from home.

After lunch, she holds factory operation meetings with her factory department managers to review the building plans as well as the company’s strategic programmes to ensure it can meet current expectations as well as prepare for future demand.

Then, she looks at all the engineering improvement activities and reviews all the programmes. “At the same time, I will have one-on-one meetings with the employees to understand what is on their minds.”

This last is so that she can understand what employees who are not her direct reports are up to. “When you hire people from different backgrounds, everybody has different expectations. So, it’s good for you to keep in touch with the people to understand what is on their minds and whether there is anything bothering them.”

She tries to end her day by 4.30pm. “Then I have a half hour before 5pm to look at my email and see if there is anything urgent I must respond to before I start the commute back to Penang. I usually try to leave Kulim around 5pm so that I can reach home around 6pm.”

Even on the commute, she works, making calls to follow up with people and have a chat with colleagues. She has her dinner at 7pm, winds down at 9.30pm and is in bed by 10. “I need to have enough sleep or else my mind cannot function.”

Although she only recently became managing director, Chong has had some version of this extremely gruelling and regimented schedule for the past 10 years. “It requires dedication and discipline, and I find it very good, because when you build this habit, it makes you extremely efficient. 

“Of course, I always tell women that they have to do what is best for them, because if they are happy, their families will be happy as well,” she says.

As Chong took over the helm at a very interesting point in Intel Malaysia’s history, not only has she had to deal with the pandemic and the surge in demand for semiconductors, but the company is also turning 50 next year, a significant milestone.

“We are committing to investing and growing our presence here further. We will work with the government, our ecosystem partners, the local community and our people, who are at the heart of it all,” she says.

Being a woman, her goals run deeper. “It is said that women hold up half the sky and account for 40% of the population in Malaysia. Yet, women’s participation in the workforce is only about 55% versus men’s, whose participation is more than 80%. 

“So, we have an opportunity to ensure that the female labour force participation will increase so that we can achieve our full potential.”

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