8 May 2026 | Brisbane, Australia
SMU President Prof Lily Kong has been conferred the 2026 CASE Asia-Pacific Leadership Award at the CASE Asia-Pacific Advancement Conference in Brisbane. Conferred by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) — a global professional association representing more than 3,000 institutions across 80 countries — the award recognises institutional leaders for outstanding efforts in promoting and supporting education and institutional advancement.
In announcing the award, CASE President and CEO Sue Cunningham noted that under Prof Kong's stewardship, SMU has "reached new heights of academic excellence, global relevance, and societal impact," and that her "inspirational leadership has grown SMU into a leading Asian university and world-class institution."
Since becoming SMU's President in 2019 — the first Singaporean, and the first Singaporean woman, to hold the role — Prof Kong has led the University through a period of significant transformation. Under her leadership, SMU has sharpened its research agenda, deepened its global reach, and built a culture in which alumni, donors, faculty, students, and partners see themselves not as separate constituencies, but as co-creators of a shared institutional purpose.
“Prof Kong leads with both clarity and conviction,” said Lim Kexin, an alumni leader and also a member of the SMU Board of Trustees. She added, “People respond to that — and it is this ability to bring faculty, students, alumni, and partners together that has enabled SMU to grow with purpose and deliver impact beyond itself.”
The strategic foundations Prof Kong has put in place are considerable. Under her leadership, SMU has scaled interdisciplinary research, established Office of Overseas Centres to oversee centres in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, and launched new platforms addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time — including the SMU Longevity Societies and Economies Institute, the SMU Resilient Workforce Institute, SMU Urban Institute as well as the Singapore Green Finance Centre. Just this year, in QS Subject rankings, SMU is named the world’s most improved university among institutions with 10 or more ranked subjects.
She also led SMU to become the first university in Singapore to mandate sustainability education for all undergraduates, and the entire SMU campus has attained BCA Green Mark Platinum certification, with one Net Zero building and one Super Low Energy building.
Prof Kong has also played a key role in building a sustainable philanthropy culture. Through initiatives such as the SMOO Challenge — SMU’s biennial charity race supporting student bursaries — she leads visibly and personally, walking and running over 100 kilometres each edition. Across four editions, the initiative has raised over SGD 2 million. Her approach to donor relationships, grounded in authenticity and a deep belief in students' potential, has inspired transformational gifts, including more than $30 million from educational advocate Dr Lillyn Teh and $7 million from alumni Jeff Tung (BBM 2013) and Benjamin Twoon (BBM2013) — SMU's largest alumni contribution to date — to build an end-to-end venture-creation pipeline for student founders
Prof Kong's commitment to the alumni community is equally personal and tangible. Under her leadership, SMU established ALCove, the Alumni Lounge in the City, a dedicated space right in the heart of campus where alumni can reconnect, take a breather between meetings, or simply spend time on campus, supported by a dedicated staff presence during the day. Her investment in alumni goes well beyond bricks and mortar: she has made a point of showing up personally at alumni events such as the Volunteers' Appreciation Dinner to present commendation awards, and carves time out of her overseas business trips to meet alumni over dinner - gestures that speak to a genuine belief that the relationship between an institution and its graduates does not end at graduation, but deepens with time. Prof Kong also hosts lunches at President’s Table for alumni on a quarterly basis, sparking reconnection and collaboration.
Prof Kong is widely recognised for her ability to articulate a vision and bring people with her. In leading the development of SMU2030: Shaping Impact, Transforming Lives, she engaged widely across the University community through multiple rounds of dialogue and consultation. The result was not only a strategic blueprint, but a shared commitment to reframing SMU’s ambition from institutional growth to meaningful impact.
What is perhaps less expected in a university president is that she also shares personally written poems dedicated to the SMU community — reflections on resilience, purpose, compassion, and collective identity. The quarterly SMU Heartbeat townhall sessions, which she institutionalised as a platform for open dialogue, have become a hallmark of her presidency, with more than 90 per cent of respondents in post-session surveys rating them as informative and insightful.
Her steady leadership was particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she guided the University through uncertainty by prioritising academic continuity, safeguarding community well-being, and accelerating digital innovation — sustaining the University through one of its most difficult periods, and reinforced confidence in SMU's ability to emerge stronger.
Beyond her institutional impact, Prof Kong’s scholarly distinction further reinforces her leadership. In 2025, she was elected a Fellow of The British Academy, in recognition of her distinguished contributions to social and cultural geography and urban research. In 2024, she received the Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society — becoming the first Asian woman in over 120 years to receive the honour.
SMU’s commitment to alumni engagement has also earned its own recognition at the same CASE Asia-Pacific Advancement Conference. SMU’s Office of Alumni Relations received a Best of Asia-Pacific award for Living it Up — a strategic alumni communications initiative that has reshaped how the University’s more than 40,000 graduates connect with one another, with the purpose of better navigating and experiencing life after graduation. Rather than a conventional campaign, Living it Up introduced shared, action-oriented language — Keep Up, Show Up, Step Up, Link Up, and Level Up — woven organically into digital platforms, physical spaces, and everyday conversations, cultivating a culture of belonging that alumni, faculty, and partners have made their own. The recognition speaks to a deeper conviction that alumni relations is not peripheral to a university’s mission, but central to it — that graduates who remain connected, engaged, and invested in their alma mater are among its most enduring sources of strength, influence, and purpose.
Together, these recognitions on the global stage reflects the collective efforts of the SMU community who have contributed to building a university defined not only by academic excellence, but by the depth of its commitment to people and purpose.