I learned to ask whose time a development promise requires.

I began my working life arranging classrooms for people who would rather have been at their sites. In July 1997 I joined Hexuan Grid Services as a training coordinator, shortly after completing industrial administration at the fictional Shanlu Institute. I was twenty-two, reasonably organised and unfamiliar with the conditions in which the technical colleagues worked. A course register seemed like a reliable measure of progress. It took several conversations with supervisors to understand how little it said about whether someone could use what had been taught.

One supervisor showed me a schedule containing the same experienced employee in three places: on an operating assignment, teaching a practical session and accompanying a new recruit. Each entry was reasonable on its own. Together they were impossible. My contribution was initially modest. I reconciled the schedules, moved the classroom booking and asked whose work would wait. That experience shaped a lasting interest in the resources behind development promises. A company cannot multiply an expert's time by putting their name on several plans.

From January 2002 I became a regional personnel officer with the same employer. The role put me closer to travel claims, accommodation complaints and the disputes that arise when site conditions differ from what recruitment has described. I supervised three administrators and reported to the regional personnel manager. I was not responsible for electrical work or technical inspection. My job was to make employment arrangements understandable and to get unresolved practical problems in front of someone who could authorise a remedy.

The most useful habit from those years was visiting a location without asking for a ceremonial presentation. A conversation over a meal could reveal that a travel connection repeatedly failed, or that a new employee did not know whom to approach about a room allocation. Those observations were not a substitute for proper employee consultation. They were a reason to ask better questions. I learned to separate a local manager's explanation from the employee's experience, then return with a response rather than collect another list of grievances.

In July 2008 I took responsibility for workforce development at Hexuan Grid Services. I led fourteen colleagues and administered RMB 5.5 million of annual training expenditure at the end of that appointment. Our task was to create learning pathways for technical employees while experienced supervisors remained busy with customer work. In 2011 I supported a plan that tried to run too many practical sessions in the autumn maintenance period. Attendance looked healthy until cancellations accumulated. We reduced the programme, paid for relief cover and moved some assessment into the following year. I had underestimated the operational calendar, and the delay was ours to acknowledge.

I joined Lanshuan Power in January 2014 as people director for its operating assets. The business was privately owned and growing its wind and solar portfolio. An employee could move from an acquired site into a larger company while continuing to work beside the same equipment and colleagues. That apparent continuity could conceal uncertainty about pay dates, service recognition and future travel. I worked with legal, finance and operations colleagues to make the employment transition explicit. I could coordinate the process and recommend terms, but I could not make legal conclusions or promise that every preference would be accommodated.

One acquisition in 2018 involved 214 employees. We maintained the existing payroll timetable for six months while checking records and discussing the proposed arrangements. That delayed consolidation and required duplicate administrative work. It also avoided forcing employees to finance our integration through an unexpected change in when they were paid. The exercise taught me that an efficient central process can impose a real household cost when timing is treated as a minor detail.

I became CHRO in January 2021. Today I lead sixty-four people-function colleagues through six direct reports and hold RMB 32 million of delegated function expenditure for 2026. The wider company employed 3,600 people at December 2025. I work from Nanjing and spend time at operating locations, including sites where colleagues live away from their families. My remit includes the employment proposition, workforce planning and management development. Engineering competence and permission to undertake specific work remain with the appropriate technical leadership.

My present work connects three questions: how we bring people into technical careers, how they can progress without leaving the work they do well, and what makes a dispersed employment relationship durable. I have presented these matters to our board's people committee as an executive, but I have never served as a director. I would bring practical field-workforce experience to a first external appointment while recognising the additional responsibilities and learning it would require. I am most interested in organisations willing to examine the ordinary working week before announcing the next ambitious recruitment number.