Women to Watch 2022: Jie Qi Lee, Edelman DXI

Jie Qi (JQ) Lee

Vice president, Singapore business lead
Edelman Data and Intelligence (DXI)
Singapore

In just three years since joining DXI, Jie Qi (JQ) Lee has piloted innovative solutions, doubled the size of the team, and delivered consecutive YOY revenue growth. It makes sense then that she was promoted from associate director to VP after just over a year. In her current role, she’s gone from strength to strength as business lead, and is Singapore’s main revenue driver for DXI; in fact, she single-handedly contributed some 32% of the total APAC revenue in the unit’s last financial year. Not only has she secured and grown some of DXI’s largest global accounts, she was also appointed to the global client leadership team where she leads two of the top 35 accounts.

To quote an example of Lee’s stellar brand of innovative thinking, she once applied her strategic thinking to a global B2B account by designing and implementing an integrated data framework and established the Edelman Trust Measurement for the client. The value of the research was well-received by the client, which led them to increase the scope of work from covering two to seven markets, as well as using the same communication framework to roll out the project in EMEA, US, and Europe. As a result, revenue for the project grew four-fold, and it became one of DXI’s largest clients in APAC. For another tech client, she managed to unlock more than US$1 million in revenue within six months by elevating the client’s communication work with data and insights.

Working at DXI, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Lee is nimble and agile when it comes to digital transformation. She is often the mastermind behind many data-driven strategies for clients, and she coaches her team to think in new ways to develop business-first solutions. She is the main driver and leader in integrating the use of primary and secondary data, machine learning, and psycholinguistic textual analysis in the region. JQ’s unique expertise is deeply rooted in her years of academic training and her work remains a highly cited peer-reviewed publication.

While Lee clearly aces the business side of the role, she’s also seen as an empathetic, courageous, and solutions-focused leader. Her leadership style has been described as being “grounded in inspiring change and collaboration by finding shared visions among the team”. Her team maintains higher-than-average engagement and satisfaction scores. As a testament to her leadership ability, Lee is now part of Edelman’s Growth Academy, a programme where future leaders are identified and nurtured. On top of that, she frequently runs onboarding, sharing, and training sessions on how best to use and understand data in communication work.