For ten years, Shery Chan built digital products in New Zealand. Loyalty programmes, peer-to-peer payment platforms, brand experiences — the kind of work where your greatest technical demand is knowing which prototype tool gets the cleanest click-through in a user test.
"The last time I coded was probably when I was in polytechnic," she recalled, referring to brief encounters with JavaScript and ActionScript two decades earlier.
In 2022, she moved back to Singapore. Two years later, she landed at SC Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Standard Chartered Bank, evaluating whether new business ideas were viable.
Neither of these jobs required deep technical skills. She was a product person — strategy, user research, business cases.
Then in June 2025, she walked into a two-day workshop called Code with AI. The bootcamp taught 'vibe coding' — using natural language to direct AI tools into writing software. The tools were Supabase, v0, and Cursor. Chan had no engineering background to lean on.
But she had something better: two decades of knowing what products need to look like from the inside.
During those two days, she built something remarkable. Using only AI-assisted tools and natural language prompts, she crafted a working prototype for a financial crime detection and investigation platform. It pulled together suspicious transaction alerts from multiple sources — internal flagging systems, Interpol notices, sanctions databases — and prioritised which ones to act on first. She built separate interfaces for anti-money laundering analysts, compliance officers and auditors. She even created synthetic data mimicking real-world fraud patterns so the prototype could be demonstrated without exposing real customer records.
Two days. No code. No engineering team.
With the prototype in hand, the conversations changed overnight. "Instead of abstract discussions about 'what AI could do', I was able to show them," she said. "Product people clicked through it. Tech teams examined the data structure. Risk department colleagues checked if the logic made sense. The discussions shifted from theoretical to tactical. It enabled the team to discuss implementation details instead of debating feasibility."
That prototype caught the attention of David Hardoon, Standard Chartered's global head of AI enablement. He had set up his team in April 2025 to strengthen the bank's AI capabilities. He wasn't looking for engineers.
Chan had arranged a casual 30-minute coffee meeting in September 2025 to discuss how the ventures arm could collaborate with his AI team. Fifteen minutes in, Hardoon realised he was talking to exactly the kind of person he needed — someone who could bridge the gap between what AI can do and what a business actually needs.
"AI-related skills were not the key things I was looking for," Hardoon explained. He wanted someone with "the ability to prototype and build rapidly, which enriched her existing knowledge of software development and know-how in navigating business decisions."
After further interviews, Chan joined as director for AI product strategy and adoption in October 2025. She now evaluates AI use cases across corporate investment banking, wealth management and other business lines.
Her advice to others considering a similar pivot: "Just start building things, even messy ones. I'm here because my design background taught me to focus on ecosystems and understanding what people are trying to accomplish — not because I could code."
Hardoon's own take on what makes someone valuable in an AI-first workplace: "Rather than obtaining the same AI certifications as everyone else, I believe that those who engage thoroughly with their domain expertise and identify a niche angle in which they can augment AI enablement will be able to be a valuable addition to the team."