Daphne Siaw Ai Lin is one of Sarawak’s most recognised creative entrepreneurs, and a Swinburne Sarawak alumni whose story does not follow the expected script. She got there with a commerce degree.
Daphne took everything her Swinburne Sarawak degree gave her and painted a career nobody had mapped out for her.
Daphne is a Swinburne Sarawak alumni success story that does not follow the expected script. With a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing degree from Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus (Swinburne Sarawak), she graduated in 2011 to multiple corporate offers. The banks and a property development company were among them.
By 2016, she launched Artsy Daphy Enterprise full-time and has not looked back.
Why She Chose Swinburne Sarawak
When Daphne enrolled at Swinburne Sarawak in the mid-2000s, she was not chasing a specific career title. Rather, she was chasing an experience.
“I wanted the university experience where it’s not just about academics, but also extra-curricular activities, a diverse culture of students, and quality educators,” she recalls.
Additionally, she majored in Marketing and minored in Economics – practical choices for someone creative but without a defined technical track. Design as a standalone discipline was not yet offered at Swinburne Sarawak at the time. Business, she reasoned, was versatile. That reasoning turned out to be exactly right.
As a Swinburne Sarawak alumni, Daphne credits her lecturers for pushing her beyond theory. Group assignments taught her collaborative dynamics. These proved immediately applicable in the working world. Outside of the lecture hall, she also balanced voluntary work with part-time work.
One of these was voluntary administrative work with a Hong Kong-based events company. This stint gave Daphne the experience of organising a professional golf tournament in Bangkok, where she worked alongside teams from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and Spain.
“The discipline and grit from the people I met during that stint were invaluable,” she says. “They helped me build values and a work ethic that we do not get to learn through theory alone.
She also pushed herself academically but not just for the grade. As a Yayasan Sarawak student loan recipient, her high CGPA entitled her to a 50% discount on the loan upon graduation. “It made me more accountable, both to myself and to the opportunity I had been given.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
Swinburne Sarawak’s reputation gave Daphne an immediate edge when she entered the job market. The corporate offers confirmed that. She accepted a role at a development company as her first job out of university. But a steady salary was not what she was ultimately building toward.
The Years Between Graduation and the Leap
Importantly, the years between 2011 and 2016 were formative in ways that went far beyond job titles. Her most defining pre-entrepreneurship role was at an architecture firm. There, she spent three and a half years doing almost everything except architecture. She managed HR, finance, contracts, and administration. Website updates and social media wee also part of her remit.
In her own time, she practised Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, designing greeting cards, posters, and colouring floor plans.
She also helped the firm launch the first PechaKucha event in Kuching – a globally recognised creative community format that she helped introduce to the city. Her bosses were supportive and encouraging when she eventually told them she wanted to start Artsy Daphy. That environment, she says, gave her the confidence to make the leap.
Pepsi. Grab. Shopee. The client list of a Swinburne Sarawak commerce graduate who chose the canvas over the corporate desk, and built a business doing it.
By 2016, she committed fully to Artsy Daphy Enterprise, creating murals, art installations, and canvas works for both national and international brands. Her client list now includes Pepsi, Grab, Shopee, Darlie, Secret Recipe, and Spritzer.
The business knowledge she accumulated at Swinburne Sarawak did not become irrelevant the moment she picked up a paintbrush. It went underground, running quietly beneath every decision.
“The theories in business were helpful a few years into the workforce,” she notes. “Understanding marketing, accounting, economics, and consumer behaviour guided my planning and implementation of ideas.”
Breaking Records and Crossing Borders as a Creative Entrepreneur in Sarawak
In 2023, Artsy Daphy Enterprise entered the Malaysia Book of Records for the largest art installation, The Turtle in the Ocean, made entirely from plastic straws. In 2024, NAS House in Dubai invited Daphne to create works for them, taking her Sarawakian creative practice onto an international stage.
Notably, neither milestone arrived by accident. They came to be because Daphne built a business, not just an art practice. And she knew how to run one.
How This Swinburne Sarawak Alumni Gives Back
Between 2020 and 2025, Daphne also led Made It Media Sdn Bhd, a digital marketing company in Kuching that supports corporate clients through content and social media strategy. Made It Media contributed to property sales during and after the COVID-19 pandemic through targeted campaigns and initiatives.
In 2025, through the Kaki Seni initiative, which Yayasan Sime Darby supported, she guided secondary school students through the planning and painting of a large-scale mural. This initiative brought hands-on, real-world creative learning into classrooms – something that is rarely seen in the creative industry.
The values she is passing on – discipline, grit, accountability, and the willingness to work beyond your comfort zone – are the same ones she credits to her years at Swinburne Sarawak.
What a Swinburne Sarawak Alumni Journey Really Looks Like
Daphne Siaw’s path from commerce graduate to creative entrepreneur in Sarawak is a story about what education makes possible beyond the expected. She did not follow the career her degree seemed to point toward. She used everything it taught her to build something that is far more her own.
A degree does not lock you into a destination. The right one gives you the tools to build wherever you choose to go. That is the lesson every Swinburne Sarawak alumni carries forward.