Thailand’s Madam Pang: from teaching dream to luxury business and football association president

Nualphan Lamsam, 58, or Madam Pang, as she is popularly known, is the fifth-generation scion of the Lamsam family, which was ranked by Forbes magazine as Thailand’s 37th most affluent with a net worth of US$890 million last July.

The family is known for founding Kasikornbank, or KBank, one of the country’s largest lenders, and has significant holdings in major insurance firms, including Phatra Insurance, Muang Thai Insurance, and Muang Thai Life Assurance.

Madam Pang dreamt of becoming a teacher in her younger years, a childhood aspiration partly inspired by her talent for quick reading and mathematics, according to Prestige Online.

However, she chose not to pursue that path and instead entered the business world. She earned a marketing degree from Chulalongkorn University, one of Thailand’s oldest higher education institutions, before pursuing a master’s degree in management at Boston University.

She embarked on her entrepreneurial journey as one of the first in the country to import designer labels, owing to her love for the world of beauty and fashion. She founded Saint Honoré (Bangkok), the Hermès distributor in Thailand, in 1997.

“I love to shop and I spend quite a lot of money on it. I have always been a fan and customer of Hermès,” she said.

She is also a co-owner of Meister Technik, the official distributor of luxury car brand Audi in Thailand.

In 2002, she joined Muang Thai Insurance, where she now serves as director and CEO.

In business and management, Madam Pang enjoys working with numbers and placing the right people in the right roles. She considers her father, who taught her the importance of building strong relationships, to be her role model.

“If we want to win over the hearts of others, be it colleagues, subordinates, business clients and partners, we must extend our hearts to them first,” she recalled learning from her father.

“I firmly believe that by keeping our staff happy, we will have devotion from them towards the company.”

This philosophy seems to also extend to her career in the Thai football industry, where she has grabbed public attention for generously rewarding players and teams.

She has spent over a decade involved in the sport, which she loves and follows despite not playing it herself, according to the Bangkok Post.

Her career began in 2006 when she was invited by the Sports Association for Intellectual Disability of Thailand to take on the role of team manager, which she accepted.

In 2009, she was appointed as the manager of the Thai women’s football team. She steered them to the championship in the 2013 SEA Games and helped them make history with two back-to-back appearances in the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. She stepped down from managing the team following a disappointing campaign at the 2019 competition.

Her success with the national women’s team sparked an interest in managing a club, prompting her to take charge of professional football club Port FC in 2015. She led them to the FA Cup title in 2019 and helped them become a force in the Thai League.

She was appointed manager of the national men’s team in 2021, a move that Somyot Poompanmoung, then president of the Football Association of Thailand, hoped would restore “the dignity of Thai football.”

“We have full faith in her ability. She is obviously someone who loves football and she is very well liked as well,” he said of Madam Pang.

She resigned from the position early last year to run for the presidency of the country’s football association. She won 68 out of 73 votes and became the association’s first woman president, as reported by AFP.

During her two and half years with the men’s team, she spent almost 60 million baht (US$1.7 million) and took them to two consecutive AFF Cup (now ASEAN Cup) titles in 2020 and 2022.

Coach Mano Polking and Thailand national team managerMadam Pang hold the AFF Cup title in 2023. Photo by Football Association of Thailand

While she shelved her teaching dream to pursue luxury business, and later football, her passion for education remains evident through her charitable efforts.

She established the Madam Pang Foundation, which aims to improve education and the quality of life for children in rural areas, according to the official website of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which appointed her as its national ambassador for Thailand.

“Education is one of the important pillars upholding the development our country’s most valuable resource, children, to fulfill their potential and become qualified world citizens of the future,” the Thai tycoon said.

She also created the Madam Cup 2022 Competition to recognize, inspire, and highlight the talents of young people in the country.

When not occupied with work and other responsibilities, she goes on family retreats at her vacation home in Cha-am, Thailand’s Phetchaburi province. Her family includes her daughter from her first marriage and her current husband, Police Colonel Narat Sawettanan.

Madam Pang shared that, despite being born into wealth, her journey has not always been smooth sailing and that her success is rooted in more than just family connections.

“As a woman, you have to forget about the word ‘gender’ if you want a place to stand,” she wrote in her autobiography, as cited by Thai newspaper The Nation.

“(…) you have to be stronger, much stronger than you’ve ever been. When you can overcome your personal obstacles, that day you will receive compliments and feel proud of yourself.”