The story of a 68-year-old man who enrolled in a Doctorate program on the predictions of a fortune teller
Patrick Wong spent 47 years in banking, commodity trading, and corporate leadership. At 68, he decided that wasn’t enough.
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Somewhere in Cairns, Australia, Patrick Wong was sitting in the back seat of a car when a Facebook advertisement changed the direction of his retirement.
There is a version of Patrick Wong’s story that begins with a fortune teller. His wife, without telling him, once asked one how long he would live. The answer: definitely not beyond 76. When Patrick considered enrolling in a Doctor of Business Administration program at 68, the maths was uncomfortable. Finishing at 71 left him with only six years to use the degree—marginal return.
He enrolled anyway. “If you have a dream, pursue it,” he says now, at 71, doctorate in hand. “Age is not a determinant factor.”
Patrick’s career had taken him from banking in Hong Kong to petroleum trading in Singapore, through a joint venture with a Chinese company, up through the ranks to CEO and then COO of a major oil trading group, and finally to President — where he led the company through a winding-up petition, located a white knight, and oversaw a full restructuring. He retired in 2015. Six months later, the job offers came back.
By the time he enrolled in the Golden Gate University Doctor of Business Administration program, he was serving as a board director for several small-cap companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. His research topic was never in doubt. Corporate governance in small-cap companies — specifically the implications of chairman-CEO duality on financial performance — drew directly from the boardrooms he had spent a decade navigating.
The DBA, unlike a traditional PhD, is designed precisely for professionals like Patrick: practitioners who bring decades of real-world experience into a research environment, and whose access to interview subjects and institutional knowledge produces findings that academic researchers cannot replicate. His age, he found, was not a handicap in the qualitative phase of his research. It was an asset. Directors spoke to him as a peer.
He was named outstanding student of 2026. He had his business card — Dr. Patrick Wong — designed before the degree was conferred, and pressed print the day it was.
A second fortune teller, encountered at a rural gathering in Hong Kong, put his life expectancy at 90. The return on investment, Patrick noted, had improved considerably.
“Money and time well spent.”
Patrick Wong completed the Doctor of Business Administration through Golden Gate University’s online DBA program — a fully accredited, fully online doctorate designed for senior working professionals. Applications are open.
Learn more about GGU’s DBA program and discover other learner stories —>
