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Zero to Hero(ine) - The Prequel to NeuEducation

Before I started a boutique leadership development company and named Women Icon 2017. I was a 30-year-old who left her amazing career path in the civil service in Singapore.

When I was 15, my father lost his job and I started thinking hard about how I would pay for my further studies. I started exploring the world of scholarships and funding. I started filling up forms to show potential funding bodies that I was needy and that I needed the money. I learned to put the best of me forward to show them that their $200 or $1000 was well spent on me rather than someone else. I learned a skill under intense pressure - socially stigmatized and emotionally charged - at 15 to ask for money. I know many others started earlier or have it worse. I cannot imagine their story. I can only tell you for me was seared viscerally in my memory.

At 17, I was in the top Arts class in my junior college but I was not the top student. I was a great good student. One of the top maybe 20% of the school, never the top. The top students had the best teachers advised them on how to get to the Cambridge, Harvard's etc. I was not in that batch. What I did instead was stop Higher Mathematics, (Maths C) and only took 3 A level subjects. So I was not even in the competition for that route anymore. I paid my way through Junior College by teaching groups of students in tuition centers. Both my brother and I did that eversince our father lost his job. $25 dollars an hour. Slavery ... thankfully teaching was a joy in itself for me. When the major exams came, I did rather well and applied for a scholarship with the government. I went to a local university and still dreamt of one day studying at Oxford, like a Singaporean Jude the Obscure.

Once I was on a government scholarship, I didn't have to worry about university tuition but I kept on working while in undergrad. In fact I had great respect for entrepreneurs. I also was drawn to the other teens and children who unlike me could not get a scholarship and could not get school. I realized more and more how lucky I was. My first non profit work was "Befrienders of Youth" - I was so involved with them that my own university extra curricular executive committee was concerned I spent too much time outside university than within. I knew early on, the true community I served was the marginalized. The student groups were great and I was on the leadership of the Catholic groups and also helped in my Arts faculty but the call was to the marginalized and youth at-risk.

When I graduated I had a career set for me in the Civil Service. If you ever asked me then, I thought I would live and die a teacher or maybe a principal. The pivot? My father had cancer and was given 9 months to live. And in that 9 months, my life went under a major review.

At 15, when my father lost his job, I was being interviewed on paper, I was a charity case. At 19, I was being invested in by the Singapore government for the potential they saw in me. At 30, I had to "sell" myself again. This time I was investing in me. I wanted to study Risk and Prevention at Harvard. Yes, I was accepted into the other Cambridge, the one in USA.

By this time, my father died. My major career life change was that I had left my government position to work full time with a non-profit that worked with teenagers; Children-At-Risk-Empowerment.

Harvard gave me a tuition grant of USD$6000, I was the only international student in the programme then. Academically I got in. Financially, I didn't have the SGD$70,000 for the studies and living.

I went to ask the Catholic community for some funding and they gave me $5000. Why? I had been supporting Catholic missions and schools for years.

I applied for a?Tan?Kah?Kee?scholarship and I received $10,000 - I was one of the 7 awardees out of 80 applicants.

Claire Chiang (Co-Founder Banyan Tree Resorts and Women Entrepreneur 2017, Singapore) introduced me to Shirin Fodzar Foundation and they supported me with $5000. I met her because she was helping Children-At-Risk-Empowerment. She is now a mentor and I support the Foundation when I can. I also met K.C. Chew from there. He helped me get an introduction to the Lee Foundation - who gave me $10,000.

I never had the chance to ask them: Why me? Why trust me? Why choose me?

But if I had to answer the question myself?

I was working already with street kids, with orphanages in India, and heading youth organizations on top of working as a youth worker. I was already in education for then 7 years. I was walking the talk. I took an extra diploma in counseling on top of my diploma in education, while I was working.

I put in my own $30,000 from my bank account and I would come back with no money but a Masters from Harvard. My uncle gave me $5000. I worked 3 jobs on top of taking 5 courses while studying.

I was the zero... whom they could support to be a hero(ine).

Recently I found myself on the other side. I have given money to young ambitious women leaders to study further and extend their work and impact. I also have been in an ecosystem of investors in startups.

If I had to distill what investors/foundations are looking for into three concepts. It would be Passion, Community and Solve a Big Problem.

Passion as seen in

A) How committed are you to the cause? Did you sell your house? Did you give up your job? Did you work on it for a greater part of your lifespan?

Community

B) Do you have customers, community or traction "the extent to which a product, idea, etc., gains popularity or acceptance"? Does what you do have fans?

& The Big Problem

C) Is there a gaping need that you or your service can meet? Are you solving a billion person problem? Or a high niche population that needs you badly - like special needs and trauma victims?

Will the women I invest in make money??Will their companies be scalable? Will they make it? Who really knows?

We can't predict the future but we can invest in the future we want.

Thank you, the someones who invested in me. The business is 10 years old. I am trying to be the Heroine for someone else now.

Want to help Women Leaders in the world to rise and shine? PM me as I am buiding a network in Asia for Women leaders in the industries of Tech and Healthcare