Thio Su Mien

Thio Su Mien (Chinese: 张嗣绵;^[1] née Huang; 1938 – 30 June 2025) was a Singaporean legal academic and lawyer. She served as the dean of the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Faculty of Law from 1968 to 1971, being the first woman to hold this position. Educated at the University of Malaya (precursor to NUS), she remained with them as an educator after her graduation, eventually rising to the position of dean, a role she served from 1969 to 1971; her successor and predecessor was Tommy Koh.

She left academia in 1971 and worked in private practice at Drew and Napier before founding her own firm, Thio Su Mien & Partners, in 1998. In 2009, as a leader of the Church of Our Saviour, she and the organisation attempted to take over the Association of Women for Action and Research, but were unsuccessful.

Thio was born in 1938 to Reverend Huang Yang Ying, the founding principal of the Anglican High School.^[2][3] She had her early education at Anglo-Chinese School and graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Malaya in 1961, and was subsequently admitted to the Bar in 1963 by Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin.^[4] She also had a Ph.D from the London School of Economics. After her graduation, Thio remained at the University of Malaya to teach at the faculty. In 1968, she was promoted to Vice-Dean after succeeding Tommy Koh.^[5] She was subsequently made Dean of the faculty, making her the seventh dean of the faculty since its establishment in 1959, the youngest and the only woman to hold the post.^[6][3] She served from 1969 to 1971, before resigning that year from academia to work in private practice;^[7][8] she was succeeded by Koh.^[9]

In the 1980s, Thio became a partner at the Singaporean firm Drew and Napier.^[10] She left them in 1998, as the head of its banking and corporate department,^[11] and founded the law firm Thio Su Mien & Partners, which is now run by her son and daughter-in-law, Thio Shen Yi and Stefanie Yuen-Thio.^[12][13] Thio also served as a judge on the World Bank Administrative Tribunal and the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal.^[14]

On 8 March 2009, a group of conservative Christian women from the Church of Our Saviour, under the leadership of Josie Lau and Thio, took over the executive council of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), a non-governmental organization in Singapore concerned with promoting gender equality. They were alleging that AWARE was harbouring and pushing a "pro-gay agenda". Six of the 11 newly elected executive committee were church members who had only joined the group three months prior to the election, and 80 of the 120 attendees of the meeting were similarly new members from the church.^[15][16] 120 members attended, while usual attendance was around 30.^[16] In defending the new executive council, Thio said she was the "feminist mentor" of the new council.^[17] The old guard called for a no-confidence vote and the new council was voted out of office on 2 May 2009.^[18] Of the 2,175 people who voted at the meeting, 1,414 voted for the no-confidence.^[19]

Deputy prime minister Wong Kan Seng later commented that "a group of conservative Christians, all attending the same church, which held strong views on homosexuality, had moved in and taken over AWARE because they disapproved of what AWARE had been doing"; he called for tolerance, cautioning that religion and politics must be kept separate.^[20]

Thio was married to Thio Gim Hock, former chairman of OUE Limited and Olympic water polo player, until his death in 2020;^[21] they had three children, Thio Li-Ann, Thio Shen Yi, and Thio Chi Ann (Rajah).^[14]

Thio was a Christian. In 2004, She reportedly blamed the 2003 SARS outbreak on Singapore's stance on abortion, and asserted that prayers seeking mercy and forgiveness allowed Singapore to avoid being affected by the 2004 Indian ocean earthquake and tsunami.^[22][23] She also wrote a book called Adventures in the Lord.^[24]

Thio was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in early May 2025, and died due to it on 30 June 2025 at around 4 a.m. SGT, at the age of 86.^[3][14][25] She was working on writing a second book called From Sinim to Kittim: More Adventures in the Lord prior to her death.^[24]