The ACE Team Foundation co-founder opens up on how bullying, grief and motherhood have transformed her
AS A TEENAGER, CHLOE TONG watched someone being bullied and did what most people do in this situation: nothing.
“I was afraid of becoming a target,” she recalls. “I was also a people pleaser and I wanted to belong. I didn’t have the confidence to risk standing apart from the group.”
It is not a flattering story – which may be why it’s so revealing. Tong doesn’t glorify her past or pretend that, given another chance, she would have rescued the victim.
But she does have something to say to her younger self.
“I would tell her that silence is also a choice. I would tell her you don’t need to be fearless or confrontational to help. You can stand beside the person. Check in later. Find an adult. Refuse to join the laughter. Small actions can interrupt the sense that someone is alone.”
More than two decades later, that adolescent failure to act has found an unlikely afterlife. Tong is now co-founder of ACE Team Foundation together with her husband, Grab co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan.
Their #STOPBullying initiative has enlisted various global figures to speak about kindness, respect and inclusion, including billionaire Ray Dalio, actors Andy Lau and Rami Malek, entrepreneur Rachel Lim, sports stars Joseph Schooling and Jeremy Lin, and Acting Minister for Manpower Jasmin Lau.
Some of the personalities were friends; others came through friends of friends – a demonstration of what philanthropy looks like when one of your resources is a list of powerful contacts.
Just as significantly, the girl who once lacked the confidence to stand apart has become considerably more willing to stand up and be counted.
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Stepping into the frame
For years, Tong’s public identity was attached to someone else’s. She is the daughter of Malaysian businessman and The Edge Media Group founder Tong Kooi Ong. She is the wife of one of South-east Asia’s best-known CEOs, with whom she shares five children, aged three to 10.
While she had her own corporate credentials as executive director of The Edge and adviser to Grab, she remained content to remain largely private – until relatively recently, at least.
“I love being Anthony’s wife, my father’s daughter and a mother to our five children, and I would choose that life again.”
But ACE, established in December 2021, forced her out of her shell. “I have had to articulate what I believe, speak up for causes I care about and take greater responsibility for the work we hope to do.”
There is no point pretending that wealth is incidental to this story. Philanthropy, particularly at the scale practised by wealthy families like Tong’s, begins with an advantage most people don’t have: substantial resources.
Still, she says, that isn’t necessarily enough. “Philanthropy shouldn’t begin and end with writing a cheque. It should begin with the problem.”
Before ACE, Tong and Tan already donated to causes, but in a manner she now describes as “responsive”: encounter a need, feel moved, help. Eventually, the couple concluded that emotion alone was an unreliable operating system.
“We realised if we wanted our giving to create deeper and more lasting change, good intentions were not enough,” says Tong. They also wanted to formalise their giving and make philanthropy part of the family’s legacy – a set of values that could be carried from one generation to the next.
Rather than build a private foundation, they established ACE as a donor-advised fund through the Community Foundation of Singapore (CFS), which administers charitable giving for donors. CFS could provide the sector knowledge, due diligence, governance and grantmaking – while Tong and Tan set ACE’s priorities and approved grants.
The model is becoming more common among Singapore donors. By June this year, CFS had 336 donor-advised funds under its umbrella, while cumulative donations had exceeded S$403 million.
“Anthony and I had the desire to give, but desire and experience are not the same thing,” says Tong. “CFS understood Singapore’s social landscape in a way that we did not. They knew the organisations working quietly on the ground, where efforts overlapped, and where gaps remained.”
Acknowledging unsung heroes
Tong is nothing if not aware of those who work “quietly on the ground”.
She was 18 when her mother died of cancer. “And, of everything from that time, the person I remember most clearly is one particular nurse… the person behind the scenes who cared for us in the most human way.”
Her mother called the nurse “Angel”. When another needle frightened her, Angel would reassure her. And when Tong’s mother died on Christmas Day, Angel happened to be on duty.
“She held my hand and stroked my baby sister’s hair as we sobbed,” Tong recounts. “During one of the most painful moments of our lives, this nurse gave us comfort and dignity when there was nothing left to fix. ”
That memory has stayed with Tong because of what it taught her about care: “It’s about making someone feel less alone.”
It’s an idea that surfaces repeatedly when she talks about her own family. Having five children, she says, has disabused her of the notion that parenthood comes with a standard operating manual.
“Just when you think you understand one child, only a few of those lessons may translate to the next. One may want to talk immediately, another may need space, while another may show what they are feeling through their behaviour rather than words.”
She and Tan also make a point of letting their children see the adults getting things wrong.
“Anthony and I are imperfect parents, and we want our children to know that. We apologise to them and to each other, and every night we try to talk openly about our mistakes and what we might do differently.”
The children have accompanied their parents on volunteering visits, including to girls’ and boys’ homes. Seeing how many young people had incarcerated parents led ACE to work with Prison Fellowship Singapore on rehabilitation and family reconnection.
Learning to be seen
Perhaps the most revealing thing about Tong’s preoccupation with making people feel seen is that she knows what it’s like to need it herself.
She was sent to boarding school at 11. “The first two years were tremendously difficult. I cried every week. I was the youngest and smallest, very shy and an average student.”
But things eventually got better. “I found the right friends and teachers, and someone gave me an opportunity to lead. Their faith in me changed how I saw myself.”
She went on to do well academically and become a sports captain. “It was not because I suddenly became a different person,” she points out. “It was because someone gave me an opportunity and made me feel seen.”
And that shy girl has not vanished. “I am naturally quieter and more introverted than Anthony.”
But motherhood, and now philanthropy, have revealed another reflex. “When one of my children feels hurt or unseen, or even when they are the one who has hurt someone else, every instinct in me kicks in.”
The same instinct carries into ACE. “When I see someone who is unable to advocate for themselves, or an opportunity to create a meaningful outcome, I become much less shy.”
ACE was created to give the Tans’ philanthropy greater purpose and permanence. But it has done something less expected too: pushed Tong out from behind the identities she was once comfortable inhabiting – daughter, wife, mother – and required her to step forward in her own right.
“I am still very much a work in progress,” she says.
Photography: Darren Gabriel Leow
Fashion direction; CK
Make up: Ginger Lynette Lyn
Hair: Kenneth Svar Ong
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