Thomas Fjeldbonde

For the past three years, I have been the President of Marine Benefits Inc. in the Philippines. Marine Benefits is a Norwegian daughter company of Norwegian Hull Club, and is today the world’s largest health insurance company for seafarers with more than 120,000 members worldwide (and growing rapidly). Uniquely focused on the health and wellbeing of the seafarer and families, Marine Benefits doesn’t just insure the members and their loved ones at home, but actively works with the shipping and crewing companies to develop a better understanding of health onboard for a long-term healthy life-style.

Before joining Marine Benefits, I was with Maersk Line for 3.5 years as Global Head of Crew Operations, managing the crewing of a global fleet of more than 300 vessels and almost 10,000 seafarers of which roughly 6,000 were deployed around the world at any given time. Today, Maersk is one of the biggest clients of Marine Benefits, with a close collaboration on seafarer wellbeing.

In the period between my EMBA at NUS in 2010-2011 and joining Maersk in 2015, I established two private companies in the Philippines. “Manila Recruitment” is today a well-established recruitment and head-hunting company in the Philippines with more than 30 active recruiters, a strong brand, and solid growth. “A Space” is a shared office space company that is starting to find its feet again after two very tough years of strict lock-downs in Manila.

I’ve now spent more than 12 years in Manila, and I’m still loving this wonderful country and its people. Having joined Marine Benefits three years ago was an amazing opportunity and choice I have only become increasingly happy with. It is a fantastic company to work in where we “walk the talk”, and as a result I have lost 30 kgs and gained a second youth by adopting what we teach seafarers about a healthy lifestyle and looking after your own wellbeing.

The NUS EMBA helped me in many more ways than can be captured in a brief description. Connections, motivation, insights to other industries, friendships, etc… But I think that more than anything, it helped shape and form thinking patterns and put theory to many of the things that I had built up during my 14 years of work before joining the programme.

It confirmed many things I knew already, while teaching me other ways of approaching challenges I had not considered before. In metaphorical terms, it took an already well equipped (but perhaps scrambled) toolbox, organised it so I knew what tools I had at my disposal and where everything could be found, while adding new tools and sharpening other tools in the process.

The EMBA also came at a time in my career where I was changing paths, and it allowed me a constructive break while deciding which direction to take. It was an extremely good period that put me on the path I am on today.