Valerie Lee is presently Deputy Director and Head of Development at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. She started off her development career at the central NUS development office (DVO) before taking on the post at the medical school.

Prior to her career in advancement, she was a journalist and sub-editor for most of her professional life. She worked primarily at Thomson Reuters, mostly as a financial journalist covering anything from day-to-day financial markets gyrations to takeovers, market meltdowns and oil crises, but also including the world of political and general reporting, which saw her traipsing into a refugee camp riot, waiting outside a prison for a hanging and following pop stars around.

She has found the qualities of resilience, and the ability to listen and synthesise the requests of other people, which she learnt as a journalist, invaluable in the work of fundraising.