OUTSTANDING BARTLEYANS

Mr Kannappan Chettiar Chief Learning Officer / Chairman The Stansfield Group Pte Ltd Class of 1975 - 1978

In 1993, with only a $20,000 line of credit and a team of six top expatriate lecturers from the United Kingdom, Mr Chettiar started Stansfield School of Business (now known as Stansfield College). Stansfield, however, is not Mr Chettiar's only foray into the education business. In 1990, after completing his second law degree, he started the biggest private law school, Singapore Institute of Commerce, at the age of 28.

A self-trained "contrarian-entrepreneur", he has defied the odds of succeeding without borrowing to create a 7 campus model occupying over 480,000 square feet of space in Singapore.

For the past nine years, he has been the Chief Learning Officer / Chairman of The Stansfield Group Pte Ltd, which consists of Stansfield College, Singapore Institute of Commerce, St James English School, Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Winfield Hall of Residence. Stansfield is the only education group to be ranked 3 years consecutively in the Enterprise 50 Awards. It also received the Singapore Quality Class (SQC) for Private Organisations in recognition of its enterprising spirit and drive in pursuing excellence in education.

The finalist in the Rotary-ASME Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2002 and the Phoenix Award 2003 feels that to succeed one must be open, honest and bold about who one is and one can do to create value for others. Mr Chettiar was recently nominated as one of the top 5 finalist for the SICCI-DBS Singapore Indian Entrepreneur Awards 2004 (Category 1: Large Enterprise).

His philosophy on failure is “We should not fear failure, and instead view this as an intermediate step towards success.”

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