What being on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia taught me

By the time this is posted, it will have been 2 weeks since the first email notification came that I had made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2021. In these weeks, I have received countless messages, texts, and emails from friends, partners and mentors far and near; congratulating me on the achievement. 

I am endlessly grateful for these messages - with some of the more poignant messages bringing grateful tears from my eyes. (More on this in the next paragraph, haha.) 

To be honest, I struggled with the writing of this reflection. In most of my quicker reflections on the other social media platforms, I often wrote that this situation made it seem like words escape me, although they usually flow naturally to me. And while I brushed over the significance of the messages to me personally, normally responding to my friends and family with emoticons and contractions like “Thanks leh GDLL” (Translation: 感动流泪 - ‘grateful tears’) - this spoke more to my inability to voice out the significance of their response, and not the absence of the same. 

This post is my attempt to be slightly more eloquent with my reflections. 

In my responses to the congratulatory messages, I found a common theme; but one of my responses, reading, “Thank you. I will serve the people” resonated most to me. Indeed, my original reactionary post on LinkedIn was themed, ‘This one’s for you’. And in most of my first posts across different platforms, I vowed to dedicate my life to serving the people, our patients and those around us. In many of other posts across the years, I have vowed to serve this country that has given me so much. 

(How did it affect me?) To give some background, I struggled through most of my teenage life and twenties with a constant sense of not being enough; never being good enough. Even now, on the cusp of my thirties, the overwhelming worry has never left me - each mistake, failure and failed relationship in my personal and professional life ricochet endlessly in my mind during quiet moments, causing me to obsess over what I could have done better, in order to finally become “good enough”. And prior to making it to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, the younger me would have probably envisioned that such an honour would have brought healing to my constant anxiety and worrying. 

I could not have been more mistaken.

The email notification came while I was in the middle of my morning huddles. And I quickly realised that apart from a few quick messages to my closest friends, that this award changed nothing about my commitments and motivations. But through the chaos of handling several meetings, investor calls and the flurry of responding to all the congratulatory messages, I also realised that I had found my North Star. 

The North Star wasn’t about me; or my accomplishments, or my achievements, or my inadequacies or my insecurities. It had never been about me. 

The happiest, most fulfilling moments in my life have never come from my own accomplishments, but from the causes that I championed and the people that I served. In my personal life, I was happiest creating opportunities to give back, whether it was organising mentorship programmes for underprivileged female youths, or reading to kiddos as part of a library programme, or running confidence/personal grooming/ financial planning workshops for those in need.

(Shortly after this photo was taken, we announced a donation to Singapore Cancer Society, kicking off the first of our social efforts)

I was happiest in Speedoc when we managed to making the impossible possible for a patient. Happiest - when a family asked us to keep a gravely ill elderly man around until Chinese New Year the following year, when his extended family could fly in from overseas to see him again, and we did! (This was pre-Covid, and I believe thanks to the dedication of the Speedoc clinical team, that this elderly man will be around long enough to see travel restrictions lifted again, post-Covid). Happiest - when I received a call for help to arrange for an urgent ART in half an hour’s time for a little girl’s quarantine to be lifted, so that she could see her critically ill mother in hospital, and we did! Happiest - when I received another call for help to arrange for urgent swabs within the hour so that a friend of mine could catch the next flight to Indonesia and visit his critically ill father, and we did! Happiest - when the maritime industry first approached us for help in certifying seafarers fit to travel home, and then working tirelessly to help thousands and thousands of seafarers fly home and see their families for the first time in 8 or 9 months. 

These are just some of the examples I hold closest to my heart, but it’s also worth noting that I couldn’t have done any of the above alone. The recognition that comes with such a big honour belongs wholly to the strength of the team that we’ve managed to build, and who have trusted us enough to join us.

(Not the whole Speedoc by far, but happy, tired faces after 14 hours straight at a swabbing event)

The only thing that I carry within my own beating heart is a sense of duty. 

The sense of duty of a healthcare leader in a global pandemic does not escape me for a single second. I often ruminate with my founding partner, Dr Shravan, upon the fact that we cannot let our guard down. It is our responsibility, and this is on us (along with the rest of the frontlines) to keep Singapore and the people around us safe. I remember one of the first instances of the sense of duty I felt, when we were one of the first people to walk into the foreign worker dormitories early last year, when nothing much was known about the virus (it was still called nCov, then!). And we saw a line of foreign workers, the vast majority of whom didn’t speak any local languages, every single one with flu symptoms, at the very onset of a global pandemic. Prior to this, although I had worked on the ground with Speedoc and met many ill patients, the ill patients were often in the company of their family, and within their own homes. Many of them also had enough resources not to worry about their illnesses. 

Walking into the foreign worker dormitories, I was not healthcare-trained like many of my teammates were, but nothing could have prepared me for the moment when I saw with my eyes, people who had built Singapore with their own hands, and who were not just ill but also afraid. In my previous writings, I have mentioned the hardest-hitting moment was meeting a worker who was born in 1996, just like my little brother, and here he was trying to tell me in broken English, that he had had flu symptoms in the middle of a flu pandemic. 

It was not the first time, nor the last time, but one of the most fervent times that I swore to dedicate my life to help people just like him. 

I feel the same sense of duty now, as Speedoc has grown in resources and capabilities, and more and more people have come to know us by name and reputation and ask us for help. I am happy and fulfilled and thankful for the patients who know that I will pick up my personal line any time of the day; for the friend’s friend’s friend who needs some medical advice and asks Speedoc for help; and most recently, for our patients and partners who have loved ones in India in the middle of its second wave of the Covid crisis; who call and message us, requesting for help. 

And for everyone who asks, I will respond the same way I always do: “We are ready. How can we help?” 

(As a note, we are working day and night with local partners in India in order to ship remote monitoring and remote diagnostic equipment and build virtual hospital beds in India; where monitoring and medical attention can administered via technology. We have already committed to 50 virtual beds and we are building more as I write this. This brings a channel via which we can funnel medical attention to a country where clinics, hospitals and laboratories are severely overwhelmed). 

“Ready to help.” I will respond this same for as long as I live. 

I will serve the people. 

I will serve our patients. 

I will give back tenfold to this nation that has given me so much. 

I will serve the people.