Gerard Ee on legacy and a life of service

Ee has two children in their 30s with his wife, a homemaker. His son is a property agent and his daughter is involved in supply chain work.

He also draws support from a group of friends from his alma mater St Joseph’s Institution, whom he meets regularly.

Of the 10 of them, seven have some kind of prostate problem, he said. 

Prostate cancer was nothing like his battle with Stage 3 colon cancer about 20 years ago. Then, a tennis-ball-sized tumour came with a sobering 40% five-year survival rate.

The illness was compounded by the stress of managing an unexpected public crisis.

Just 13 days into his 2005 retirement, then Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan tasked Ee with restoring confidence in the NKF after chief executive T.T. Durai and his board resigned amid public outrage.

Durai had sued Singapore Press Holdings over a Straits Times report that he had a gold-plated tap in his office toilet. He withdrew his defamation suit after his lavish salary and perks, questionable use of donations and other damaging details were made public during the trial.

Ee inherited a full-blown crisis: nearly 50,000 donors cancelled their regular donations in a week, the NKF headquarters was vandalised, and anxiety gripped staff and patients.

Overwhelmed on day one, the devout Catholic spent an hour praying in his office.

“I had no idea what to do or what to start with,” Ee recalled. “I never prayed so hard in my life.”

In the months that followed, he steadied the charity by commissioning an independent public audit of its work and setting up proper financial controls and other governance measures.

He had to make tough calls, including retrenching over 100 staff, mostly in fund raising, after the charity stopped actively raising funds for several years. 

During his seven years at the helm, he stabilised NKF’s operations and expanded its services to more patients and improved patient care. 

Yet the strain of leading a charity under intense scrutiny took a physical toll.

For example, the skin on his hand began to bleed, which he attributed to stress.

Another high-profile assignment followed when he headed the committee to review ministerial salaries. The public interest in the matter brought renewed pressure, and his hand bled again.  

The committee recommended significant pay cuts after pegging ministerial pay to a much wider pool of top earners here, and factoring in a 40% discount off the market benchmark to reflect the ethos of political service. The Government accepted its recommendations in 2012.

“I can only be myself, for better or for worse”

Ee’s introduction to volunteering came early. As a boy, he was exposed to charity work by his father, the late Ee Peng Liang, affectionately known as Singapore’s “father of charity” and founder of the Community Chest.

But it was only in his late 20s, while helping his father with the logistics of a TV fund-raiser, that he met many people with disabilities. That left a lasting impression, which sparked his life of service.

He said: “It was the first time I felt touched. In spite of their condition, they were so cheerful and positive, and it was then that I felt the tug to want to do something more.”

Over the next few decades, Ee championed causes such as accessibility for people with disabilities, youth rehabilitation and active ageing.

The long list of organisations he chaired includes the National Council of Social Service, the Charity Council, the Council for Third Age, Automobile Association of Singapore and the Eastern Health Alliance. 

For Ee, success has always been measured in human outcomes.

“I very much believe that when you do good, you must focus on the outcomes and not the output. And the easiest way to measure outcomes is the answer to the question: how have peoples’ lives improved because of what you have done to help?”

Ee, the youngest of five children, said he never felt burdened to live up to his father’s reputation. This is even though some people who had once sought his father’s help turned to him after his father’s death. 

“I would do my best, but I would not try to imitate my father because I can only be a poor imitation. I can only be myself, for better or for worse,” he said.

In his second retirement, Ee intends to keep sharing his experience with younger people and share insights on ageing and other topics on social media. 

Asked what he hoped his legacy would be, he returned to the lesson from his father.

“That my existence has benefited people. He said at the end of the day, the most important answer is whether your existence has benefited anyone or not.”

Then, with a chuckle, he added: “And he went on to say even a dog has given much love and happiness to its owner.”