Together as partners in life, and in business
From NTU classrooms to life-long partnerships, two couples share how their academic journey at NTU Singapore blossomed into romance, then collaboration, as they built families, marketing companies, and a bright future together.
Kelvin Kao and Daphne Ling, founders of advertising agency PROTOCOL, first met during their first semester at NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. Daphne arrived late to class and chose Kelvin – who had picked pop star Madonna as his presentation topic – as her project partner.
Kelvin and Daphne tied the knot two years after graduation, in 2007.
“While working on the project, we spent a lot of time together,” Daphne recalls. “As we got to know each other, we realised we had a lot of shared interests and there was chemistry between us,” Kelvin adds, finishing his wife’s sentence.
Their complementary roles helped the agency grow steadily for more than a decade, taking on a wide range of clients from public institutions to well-known consumer brands. Today, PROTOCOL has expanded to a team of 15 full-timers with rotating interns.
They appreciate the skills picked up doing communication research in NTU as it taught them how to break down problems and analyse them. Daphne says. “That framework set the foundation for everything we are doing in our business now.”
Love found them at NTU
Another couple, Emily Kim Palmer and Toru Yagi, experienced a similar shift. Emily, who is Thai-English, was from the United Kingdom and Toru was from Japan. They met in NTU’s Nanyang Business School during a full-time MBA programme in 2013.
Emily and Toru got married in 2015, officially sealing the deal as lifelong partners.
They co-founded Aun Communications in London in 2019 and focused on helping traditional Japanese companies transform their businesses. Inspired by their professional experiences, the company combined Toru’s expertise in strategic interpersonal and management communication with Emily’s strengths in executive coaching and cultural awareness.
“We had discussed starting a business together during our MBA days,” Toru says. “After our eldest son of two children was diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, we made the move to integrate our work and personal lives to build stronger support for him and our family.”
For Emily, NTU’s diversity proved pivotal. “Working with people from so many nationalities helped me realise that bridging differences is something I really enjoy and something I can help people with,” she says.
Managing work, life and everything else
“We were so broke,” Kelvin recalls candidly. “We had to transfer $20 to each other just to meet the minimum amount for our bank accounts. Most of the time, we were winging it. But there was a level of faith that things would work out.”
Then: Kelvin (left) and Daphne (second from left) together with Daphne’s family during their Convocation ceremony in 2005.
Now: Kelvin and Daphne with their five children on a family holiday.
In 2021, the couple took another entrepreneurial leap by opening a cafe, Main Street Commissary. While the cafe became a beloved space for Kelvin to meet potential clients and collaborators, it shuttered in 2025 due to rising rental costs.
For Emily and Toru, working together created resilience. Their relationship unfolded across borders after graduation as Toru returned to Japan while Emily stayed in Singapore. They sustained a long-distance relationship, married, started a family and eventually relocated to London. It was there that they decided to strike out on their own.
Toru (first from left) and Emily (second row, fifth from right) together with the rest of their MBA batchmates during their time as students in NBS in 2013.
Toru and Emily saying farewell and expressing gratitude to the Graduate Studies team at Nanyang Business School in 2018 before relocating to London with their son.
