Steven Cheah

I started teaching at a public Malaysian university in 1984 and was in Vancouver in 1986 for three months as a CIDA visiting scholar. Intrigued by the then-nascent market in financial innovations, in 1988 I accepted a PhD scholarship at Leeds University, UK, to study how financial regulatory framework and constraints impacted the development of financial innovations. I joined KPU Economics Department in 2013 after two decades of teaching economics courses at undergraduate and post-graduate levels at three universities.

A life-long learner, I love learning new things and exploring diverse professional and career opportunities and challenges. From 1992 to 1996, I was retained as economic advisor by a public-listed commercial bank in Malaysia. I spent the following year as Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia at Athens (USA). Another memorable experience was a lecture delivered to ‘Semester at Sea’ students when their cruise ship docked in Penang in 2002. I qualified, in 2007 as an Australian Certified Management Accountant (CMA). For six years (2006 to 2012), I held deanship positions at two different universities. I took up the BC Provincial Instructor Diploma program in 2013 and completed it in 2017.

I am passionate about research and publication, and have published five academic books, over 25 journal articles and book chapters, and currently sit on the editorial board of two international academic journals. I supervised 12 masters and five Ph.D. students in banking and corporate governance; and served as external thesis examiner for Ph.D. and DBA degrees of Australian, Malaysian, and Indian universities. I have delivered a keynote address in India and made over a dozen conference presentations in U.K., Switzerland, Australia, China, Japan, Canada, and the U.S.

I worked closely with industry, and have undertaken various consulting projects for international agencies (United Nations Development Program UNDP, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific ESCAP, Japan Overseas Vocational Training Association OVTA), international consulting firms (Frost and Sullivan), multinational corporations (Dell, Fairchild Semiconductors), central and commercial banks, and the Institute of Banks Malaysia.

In my younger days I was an avid basketball player, coached a college team, and took a state youth team to a national tournament. Nowadays I enjoy walking, meditation, reading, and above all, teaching economics. I love traveling too (been to 30 countries and counting). Emily and I have three grown daughters and a grandson.