Founder & funder

Rob Cheung

Rob founded and personally funds Tentmaker Bridge of Hope. He began with a simple conviction: one person cannot meet all the needs of a community, but a growing network of tentmakers can bring many forms of practical help.

His role is to build the bridge—bringing professionals, churches, and people seeking guidance together—so the tentmakers’ gifts can serve the community freely.

The mission begins in Thailand, where our first project is taking root in Chiang Rai. China and Japan are the next two focus regions — efforts there are taking shape.

Rob earned his engineering degree in the United States and began his career in the mid-1980s as an R&D engineer at three names that shaped modern technology: Xerox—the legendary company whose research lab pioneered personal computing; TRW—a giant of American aerospace and defense technology; and Vitalink—an early pioneer of internetworking, the technology that became the internet’s backbone.

His journey then took him to Asia’s research frontier, joining the Institute of Microelectronics (IME) in Singapore—the city-state’s national R&D engine for semiconductors—as an R&D engineer. Moving to Hong Kong, he stepped into leadership at large multinational corporations: first as a General Manager, then leading a division of hundreds of sales and marketing professionals operating across Asia. He subsequently helped establish a Toshiba joint venture in China for business IT solutions and served on its board of directors, before joining ASTRI, the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute—the territory’s flagship applied-research institution—as its first business development leader to secure three technology-transfer license deals with Hong Kong industry partners.

His final stop in industry was a startup in Asia that he co-founded with two PhD technology veterans from Bell Labs—and it was there that his two callings converged. Working as a professional while sharing his faith, he lived for the first time as a true “tentmaker,” in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, who made tents to support his ministry. In his tentmaker journey in Asia, he had preached the gospel to business leaders.

Across a career spanning the US and Asia—from R&D engineer to general manager to founder—one thread ran through his work: building bridges between technology and markets, between cultures, between ideas and the people who need them.

“Your profession is your ministry.”