3rd October 2026 – (Hong Kong) Maye Musk, the author, supermodel and dietetics PhD, addressed a Hong Kong audience on leadership, resilience and legacy, offering a brisk summary of the parenting ethos that shaped her three children, including entrepreneur Elon Musk. While often introduced as “Elon Musk’s mother”, she foregrounded an independent life story marked by reinvention across nutrition, writing and fashion, noting that she embraced technology early and continues to explore artificial intelligence tools in everyday planning. On stage, she exchanged views with Angel Ng Yin‑yee, Prudential’s Regional Chief Executive Officer for Greater China, Customer and Wealth, in a discussion that blended humour with practical reflections on navigating rapid change.
Musk described a career that has spanned clinical practice and international modelling, recalling that at 74 she appeared on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover, a milestone that challenged expectations about age and work. Even as she engages with emerging technology, she argued that physical exploration remains irreplaceable, quipping that if humanity wants to reach Mars or the Moon, it will still have to build rockets. She added that the point of new tools is not blind acceptance of answers but sharpening the questions we ask.
Her conviction in adaptability, she said, was forged in a demanding childhood that included repeated journeys across the Kalahari Desert and, later, years of frugality as a single mother in Canada. She spoke of buying second‑hand school uniforms and, even in her sixties, opting to sleep in a relative’s garage when space was tight—memories that, she suggested, keep inconveniences in perspective and focus attention on what truly matters.
Turning to family life, Musk rejected the notion of prescriptive “rules”, explaining that relentless work left little room for micromanagement when she was raising Elon, Kimbal and Tosca. The single non‑negotiable, she said, was that each child took responsibility for themselves. That stance, she believes, accelerated their self‑reliance. She recounted a morning before SpaceX was founded when a sleep‑deprived Elon announced he had spent the night designing a rocket; her response was a calm offer of scrambled eggs—an approach she framed as supportive, not star‑struck.
Musk said that whenever her son launched a new venture, predictions of failure were routine, yet persistence repeatedly overcame scepticism. She emphasised that parental backing should provide a safety net rather than a fixed track, adding that if her children ever risked everything and failed, they would always be welcome to return home and start again. The message to the audience was clear: cultivate resilience, keep learning and allow the next generation the freedom—and responsibility—to chart their own course.