NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Gwendolyn Lim is a partner and the head of Bridgespan’s Southeast Asia office, based in Singapore.

She has more than 20 years of consulting experience with Bain & Company spanning South-East Asia, North Asia, and the US. While at Bain, Gwen led the customer practice for more than eight years and was an active member of the retail and financial services teams. She has worked closely with multinational and local clients on topics such as customer transformations, corporate and business-unit strategy, performance turnarounds, and due diligence. Some of her past projects include helping major department stores in SEA to identify, retain, and drive share-of-wallet amongst their most loyal customers, redesigning the customer experience for one of the largest Asian banks around fraud, and articulating the process and playbook around corporate mergers and acquisitions for an industrials conglomerate.

In the social impact space, Gwen has worked with a leading Singaporean university to outline its five-year strategy across academics, research, and entrepreneurship as well as tackling its fundraising and endowment needs. Additionally, she has led a project with a major field-building NGO in the Philippines to identify sectors that would generate the largest number of high-impact entrepreneurs within the next three to five years.

In her personal capacity, Gwen has previously aided the Community Foundation of Singapore to articulate its three-year strategic plan–identifying target donor segments and delineating criteria to identify high-potential charitable organizations.

Gwen earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a graduate of Stanford University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in economics.