When Jayne Leung joined Facebook in 2010, she was the tech giant’s first employee in Hong Kong. 

Taking this role was a bit of a risk, but as Leung explained at a webinar on 10 July, she relished the opportunity to build the company’s Hong Kong presence from scratch.

“I’ve always been good at starting things up and also in bringing global operations to the Asia and China region,” she said. “So that played to my strengths.”

As well as being a good fit in terms of her skills and experience, Leung said she thought the challenge would be fun.

“I love being the first employee of a company,” she said. “I was then joined by a few colleagues. We were responsible for everything from sales and marketing to buying snacks and printers – it was an incredibly fun journey.”

Today, Leung is Vice President and Head of Greater China at Facebook, which now has employees spread over four floors at its Causeway Bay offices. Some things have changed a lot in the last 10 years, including the shift to mobile and Facebook’s acquisition of other platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp. But Leung said the company culture has remained the same, focusing on openness and impact. 

“Every Facebook office has a consistent look and feel globally, including a completely open floorplan. There are no room for individuals except for meetings – even our CEO Mark Zuckerberg sits with the rest of the staff.”

Facebook has career development plans for its employees to enable them to grow within their roles and to stay engaged with their work. “We also encourage staff to move within teams and explore other roles, to help them get more career exposure,” she added. Facebook also offers benefits including generous maternity and paternity leave.

Diversity is an important part of Facebook’s ethos, and the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg – also author of the bestseller “Lean In” – has helped to set the tone across the whole company. However, Leung added that while there are plenty of women in the business side at tech companies, this is not the case on the technology side. She said she hopes to see more girls taking up STEM subjects to address this imbalance. 

Facebook also runs the #SheMeansBusiness initiative, which offers support to female entrepreneurs. “We have trained 73,000 women in the Asia Pacific and 8,000 in Hong Kong. I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of inspiring women leaders, and have seen how many of these women-led businesses have thrived after learning from the workshops.”

Leung’s own career in the tech space began with “a bit of luck” in the beginning, she explained.

“I started off in advertising. It was during the days of the dot-com bubble, and the agency I was working for set up a digital division. That was my first step into the digital space – I didn’t even know what HTML meant.”

This experience led to an opportunity at DoubleClick, an internet advertising company, as it expanded into Asia. Leung then worked for Google after it bought DoubleClick in 2007, and for another start-up, before moving to Facebook. 

Speaking about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Leung said it has triggered a pivot in consumer behavior towards a more digital life. “Some categories will change for the long term, like entertainment, online education, and food delivery – whether cooked or ingredients.”

She also expects to see more direct interaction between businesses and customers, and subscription-based models, which will be facilitated by digital platforms. 

This webinar, hosted by WEC Chairman Nikki Ng, was part of WEC’s Women in Innovation and Technology series of events.