Hyegi Chung
Director of Accel Singapore
01
Biography
Hyegi is Director of Santé Accel Singapore, where she focuses on venture building and investing in new healthcare and life sciences companies across Asia.
She began her career in investment banking, advising on healthcare M&A, before transitioning to international hospital operations. She later built a regenerative medicine company from startup through to its acquisition. Prior to joining Santé, Hyegi spent seven years at Verily Life Sciences as APAC Country Manager, helping build its regional presence. Her work spanned healthcare technology, public health, and commercializing new solutions across the region. She also co-founded Huat Ventures, investing in emerging technologies including blockchain.
Having lived, worked, and built businesses across Asia and the United States, Hyegi brings a cross-border perspective spanning healthcare investment, operations, entrepreneurship, and technology. Mentorship has been an important part of Hyegi’s career. A longstanding Google for Startups mentor, she also advises AI startups on innovation, commercialization, and leadership.
Hyegi earned her MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and her MBA from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.
02Q&A
Who is a visionary leader you are inspired by?
Lee Kuan Yew. I recently visited The Albatross File: Singapore’s Independence Declassified exhibition at the National Library, which documents one of the most challenging periods in Singapore’s history -our separation from Malaya. It brought home again the tremendous uncertainty Singapore’s founding leaders faced and the extraordinarily difficult decisions they had to make. What I find most inspiring about Lee Kuan Yew was his courage to make difficult choices, his pragmatism, and his ability to translate a long-term vision into action. Building Singapore required not only imagining what was possible, but also creating the institutions, culture and infrastructure needed to make that vision a reality.
What, in your opinion, is one of the greatest innovations of the 21st century?
Air conditioning! Although, strictly speaking, it was invented in 1902 and therefore misses the 21st century by quite a margin! For those of us who live in a tropical environment, it is difficult to imagine modern life without it.