| Fall '07/Winter '08: Alumni: Jackson Tai ’72
Tai Builds a Bank for
All of Asia
For 25 years, Jackson Tai ’72 made a significant impact in the investment banking business at J.P. Morgan & Co. Starting as a summer intern between business school years, he went on to lead the investment banking and securities division’s Tokyo office, build a global real estate investment banking practice out of New York, serve as senior officer for Asia Pacific based in Tokyo, and oversee the Western United States customer franchise out of San Francisco.
He retired as a managing director in 1999, saying “we thought it would be wonderful to live in Southeast Asia.” So when he received an offer to join The Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), he and wife Kay packed up and moved to the Pacific Rim. In nearly eight years with DBS, he rose to vice chairman and chief executive officer, accelerating the bank’s move toward becoming one of the larger banks in Asia by market capitalization. (Tai retired from DBS at the end of 2007.)
Tai’s Rensselaer experience bore fruit in his later life—and vice versa. As editor of the Polytechnic, he quickly learned how to lead an enterprise, take risks, and motivate people. His role as timpanist in the school’s orchestra reflects a lifelong love of the arts: he is a longtime board member of the San Francisco Symphony and the city’s Asian Art Museum. He is a former member of the Asian Civilisations Museum of Singapore. And true to his status as a difference maker on two continents, he uses his position as a Rensselaer trustee to advocate an international perspective.
