The man at the helm of Ocean Alexander, Johnny Chueh, never expected to be where he is today. Becoming President and CEO of the Taiwanese shipyard wasn’t exactly part of the plan for the 46-year-old, as he explains to me during a rare moment of calm at the Cannes Yachting Festival. Taking refuge in the galley on board the Ocean Alexander 90R which was making its European debut at the show, we take the opportunity to escape the stifling heat and go back to the beginning. Photo: Marc Montocchio Chueh’s early years were spent in Taiwan, moving to Australia for his schooling and enrolling in the highly prestigious and demanding University of Chicago economics programme for his bachelor’s. After this, it was a stint as a research assistant for psychology and then a business professor with the idea of earning himself a doctorate in organisational behaviour for a future career in academia. Next up, to gain some practical business experience before starting graduate school, Johnny joined Mitchell Madison, a Chicago consulting company. And then? A serious fork in the road. Photo: Alexander Marine Johnny’s father, Alexander Chueh, had launched his Taiwanese boat-building company in 1977 and had allowed his children to follow their own paths, with Johnny’s elder sister choosing to study divinity. As Johnny explains, “He was resigned to that. I know that deep down he wished one of us would take over the family business, and it is traditional to pass on the family legacy to your own blood in Taiwan, but he was mature and modern enough in his thinking that he knew he couldn’t force us.” But then fate threw one of her curveballs and Alex fell and suffered a stroke in 1998 at a dinner he was hosting for the yard’s workers. This impaired his speech and mobility and resulted in him being unable to run the company. To ensure the orderly succession of the company to professional managers, Johnny and his sister agreed to spend a year each in Taiwan to support their father with the transition period. Photo: Ocean Alexander Resigning from his Chigaco job, Johnny moved back to his birth country and, at the age of 24, started his year’s experience in boat building and managing Ocean Alexander. With no experience whatsoever, Johnny got stuck in, spending a month in the plant production cycle and getting to grips with the basics of woodworking, fibreglass laying, electricals, mechanical systems, boat finishing and more by working side by side with the workers and earning their trust, proving that he was so much more than just the boss’ son. Next, he went to the office to perfect the art of communication, learning all about the business’ inner workings and clients and making the most of his fluency in Mandarin and excellent English. He also shadowed the managers and spent time inspecting the yachts in various stages of construction, learning everything he could and asking endless questions until his curiosity was satisfied. Photo: Marc Montocchio Despite all this effort, Johnny was determined that this experience would only be for a year, after which he would be able to enrol in graduate school and his real career could start. Except, of course, this hasn’t happened yet. “My sister said, ‘I know I promised I would come, but I’m not coming back, so you deal with it, Johnny.’ I was fine with doing it for another year.” And then another year, and another, and so on. His father’s health continued to fluctuate and Johnny gradually began to take on more responsibility at the yard, checking on projects from abroad while visiting his mother in Australia, who passed away from a serious illness in 2000. As Johnny remembers it, his father’s uncertain health helped to maintain a frictionless relationship between the generations. Photo: John Lair “When I came back, my role gradually changed. I think if you’re a first-generation businessman, you need to be a bit of a control freak because you have to manage everything in order for it to work out right, but because of his health he wasn’t able to do a lot of things, so gradually different pieces would come to me. In terms of the friction that usually happens between the first and second generation, this was reduced because of his health.” By 2002, Johnny was fully in charge of the company. “I actually applied to and got accepted for a PhD programme. I was going to be an academic and then a professor, but life sent me down a different tangent.”