She was made a vice-president at American Express at the age of 31, when all her peers in that banding were, on average, aged 44.

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Ms Rachel Yeow, now 36, will be one of the speakers at a conference on Thursday to discuss the findings of an American Express study on gender diversity as part of International Women's Day.

Ms Yeow has never been afraid to speak her mind, even if she risked offending her senior colleagues. She recalled a time when she was a business analyst for an account, which was clearly not doing well. But at the end of the day, the sales team was still ranked as top performer.

She took this up with her general manager, who had a different point of view, causing her to walk out of the office to 'take a breather' when the discussion got too heated. 'The next day, I walked back to his office and told him that we were going to disagree, but that was okay.' In the end, the team's performance band was changed.

She felt that incident was a turning point in her career. 'It gave me the courage to not be afraid to confront someone if something was wrong.'

The Malaysian, who grew up in Australia and moved to Singapore for work about 10 years ago, admitted it was not easy being in top management, especially when it came to layoffs. 'It's heartbreaking. You get sleepless nights,' she said. But at the end of the day, it is a reality companies have to deal with. 'You just have to be genuine and not short-change people.'

And while she manages a team of seven finance professionals now, and supports a division of about 90, when she is at home, her husband is the boss. 'I'm fairly traditional. The man has a lead place at home,' she said. 'But my husband will probably say I'm the boss.'

Melissa Sim

This article was first published in The Straits Times.