Play video: Never Stop Moving: Brian Lau on Curiosity, Risk and Choosing Your Own Path (opens in modal)
For Brian Lau (MBA ’91), success has never been about following the most obvious path.
Born in Ottawa and raised in Burlington by parents who immigrated from Hong Kong, Lau grew up in what he describes as a typical suburban Canadian household. Education mattered, but many of his earliest lessons about hard work came through sport, where effort, goals and the drive to distinguish yourself were part of the experience.
Those lessons would follow him into a career defined by movement.
Over more than three decades, Lau has worked across government, technology manufacturing, and investment banking & private equity, with a career that has also taken him between Canada and Asia. The path may look unconventional, but Lau sees its chapters as interconnected, shaped in part by the rise and evolution of globalization throughout his working life.
Today, Lau is a partner in the private equity practice at ShawKwei, one of Asia’s oldest independent private equity firms, where he focuses on buyouts and strategic investments in the energy, precision engineering and beauty supply chain industries.
What kept him moving? Ambition, certainly, but also curiosity and a willingness to recognize when it was time for a new challenge.
That willingness to change direction has become one of the defining features of Lau’s career. Rather than always choosing the safest or most predictable option, he has embraced the turns that felt meaningful to him.
A career is a path, and along the way, there are moments when you have to choose which direction to take. Junctions where one can turn left or turn right” he says. “I’ve always chosen the turns that felt personally meaningful — even when they were riskier or less popular.
For Lau, the result has been a deeply rewarding career.
His MBA at Schulich gave him a strong foundation for navigating the wide range of challenges he would encounter throughout his career. Lau credits the program’s breadth and the diverse business issues and cases he encountered with giving him the confidence to approach unfamiliar situations and complex challenges. Years later, he reflected to then-Dean Dezsö Horváth that the Schulich experience ultimately becomes “part of one’s fabric,” shaping how graduates think about and approach business problems, often without even realizing it.
Experience has also shaped how Lau leads. Some of his greatest lessons came not when things were going well, but during difficult or crisis situations. His time in private equity reinforced the importance of decisive action and taught him that moving forward can matter more than waiting for certainty.
It’s a perspective he believes younger professionals can benefit from. His advice is to build strong experience, remain impatient for more and consciously look for opportunities.
“Take risks early in your career, when you have the freedom to do so,” he says. “Look for opportunities and be open to where they might lead. Opportunity often finds you, but you have to be actively looking for it.”
And despite the choices and hard work behind his career, Lau is reluctant to claim all the credit for where it has taken him.
“I’ve been lucky being in the right place at the right time,” he says, “but the harder I worked the luckier I seemed to get.”
For Lau, perhaps success isn’t about knowing exactly where the path will lead. It’s about doing the work, recognizing opportunity and having the courage to take the turn when it appears.
Get connected with the people, information, and support you need to succeed.
Start your application and take the first step toward building success on your own terms.
