When one is asked to take on a project, it pays to have strong expertise in the field. Duangporn Rodphaya's career is a case in point. In her first job three decades ago as a junior civil servant, she began working on state policies dealing with major commodities, particularly rice.
That background came in handy in 2014, when she was assigned to discharge 18 million tonnes of state rice stocks, the largest amount ever.
"It was a historic release of rice stocks that no one had had to deal with before, and you needed to release the stocks at a time that the world market had plenty of rice," Mrs Duangporn recalls.
In 1977, a young Duangporn graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Chulalongkorn University and started her career in the commodities division of the Commerce Ministry's Foreign Trade Department. Her duties included work on government-to-government rice deals, mostly with China and some of Thailand's traditional rice clients in the Middle East. The role taught her about the trade, logistics and quality standards of rice.
Mrs Duangporn, 59, spent nearly half of her working life dealing with rice traders, exporters, retailers and farmers, with the goal of stabilising Thai rice prices. After more than a decade dealing with rice, she moved on to several departments in the Commerce Ministry.
In 2003, Mrs Duangporn shifted to the Bureau of Merchandise Trade Administration, overseeing import-export issues and the standards of Thai products, before moving to the Bureau of Trade Interests and Remedies in 2004, working on protection of Thailand's interests in the world market.
During 2013-14, she was assigned as deputy director-general of the Intellectual Property Department. This position seemed to take her quite far away from the Foreign Trade Department, which oversees rice-exporting issues.
It appeared that she would spend the rest of her working life in other jobs in the Commerce Ministry before retiring peacefully at 60. But things got interesting in 2014, when the National Council for Peace and Order staged a coup on May 22.
The ouster of the caretaker government formerly led by Yingluck Shinawatra set the stage for exposure of Thailand's biggest rice scandal.
The debacle began in 2011, when Yingluck took power after her party's landslide election win. During the campaign she had promised to buy every single grain of rice in the country for 15,000 baht a tonne. That was roughly double the market price of 7,000-8,000 baht at the time.
The Yingluck government's rice-pledging scheme brought 18 million tonnes of rice into state stockpiles, with no clear plan for how to deal with the supply.
Yingluck was removed from office by the Constitutional Court on May 7, 2014, but the massive rice stocks and burdensome management and warehouse rental costs remained, leaving the military-led government to sort out the mess.
The question went to the Foreign Trade Department, where some personnel were seen as lacking strong expertise in rice and others were under suspicion of taking part in corruption under the rice-pledging scheme.
"At that time I was working in the Intellectual Property Department," Mrs Duangporn says. "However, I sometimes offered comment and suggestions to the Commerce Ministry's permanent secretary to help tackle the [rice] problem.
"I do not want to be offensive against anyone in the previous government, so I will not say something about who caused this huge problem and why they did it. But what everyone knew by that time was that the rice stocks were involved in massive corruption cases and no one wanted to deal with it."
One day, Mrs Duangporn was asked by the government to take the position of director-general of the Foreign Trade Department. She would be tasked with getting rid of the 18 million tonnes of rice stocks as quickly as possible.
She declined the post several times until one day the permanent secretary asked: "If it is not the right time for you to lend a helping hand to our nation, when will it be the right time for you?"
It was a question that shook Mrs Duangporn. "It's now or never," she said before accepting a job that would require all of her dedication.
She started inspecting rice inventories across the country and set up a committee with a clear action plan to gradually and cautiously release rice stocks. It was during this time that every rice-producing country was enjoying a bumper crop. The global rice glut kept pressure on prices as Thailand's own rice stocks were starting to decay.
"The longer we kept the stocks, the higher the losses to the government," Mrs Duangporn says. "So it was time to pull off the bandage and accept the truth."
She and her team set a target to offload the entire 18 million tonnes of rice stocks within three years.
Starting in 2014 and continuing through this year, Mrs Duangporn and her team classified the rice by various grades and offloaded the stocks in precise amounts from time to time.
"We needed to be very careful in releasing the stocks," she says. "Do not forget that Thailand is also a major rice producer that grows about 33 million tonnes of paddy a year. We needed to make sure that our stock sales would not hurt our rice growers. So we stopped selling rice during the harvesting period to avoid adding pressure on price."
Mrs Duangporn and her team endured criticism, particularly from those who had praised the massive farm subsidies. But finally she and her team succeeded in releasing all 18 million tonnes of rice stocks within three years, as planned.
The triumph helped unchain the Thai rice industry and let it move freely under real market forces, with no additional price pressure from state stocks. It also marked Mrs Duangporn's swan song as a civil servant.
"My task is over," she says, "and I will not feel any loneliness in retirement, since it's time for me to take care of my family members, who kindly allowed me to do my job for many years without any complaint, particularly my mother-in-law."
She has used most of her savings to buy a 20-rai coconut orchard in Ratchaburi province, a region famed for producing premium-grade coconuts.
When asked what she'll do in retirement, Mrs Duangporn says: "I will take care of my coconut orchard. It's time to taste and smell the aromatic coconut juice."