About Me
I’ve always had a tendency
to see possibilities.
More often than not, I simply see the potential in something — an idea, a person, a resource, a situation or an opportunity — and begin to wonder what might be possible.
Perhaps some of that comes from my background in science. I was trained to observe, to question and to investigate. Sometimes my first instinct is simply to ask:
What if we looked at this differently?
What if there is something here we haven’t noticed?
What if we tried something that has not been done before?
That instinct has followed me into very different parts of my life — from gems and jewellery to education, business, financial planning, building communities and bringing people together.
On the surface, these can look like very different worlds. But I have never really seen them as separate parts of me. For many years, I have been trying to understand how they fit together — and what it is that connects the things I find myself doing.
When I entered the financial industry in 2022, that question became even more important. Here was another world that seemed quite different from everything else I had done, yet somehow, I knew it belonged.
Over time, I have begun to put words to this connection: recognising what is already there, seeing its value and potential, and helping to create the conditions for something more to happen.
Perhaps that is the best place to begin my story.
My life has taken me through
some very different worlds.
— although I certainly didn’t set out with a plan for it to look this way.
I graduated from university with a degree in pharmacy, but already knew that I was more interested in business. My first opportunity came unexpectedly: my mother heard about a small pancake stall in a coffeeshop that was available for takeover, and we thought, why not give it a try?
So I found myself running a pancake business while studying in Bible school, where I later graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Theology.
Not long after that, my then-boyfriend, now husband, invited me to join his family’s gem business. I knew very little about gemstones, but I was curious. Thankfully, my scientific background helped me understand gemology quite naturally, and the more I learnt, the more I came to appreciate the extraordinary world of gemstones.
I was given the opportunity to teach gemology even before completing my Gem-A diploma. Through that, I discovered how much I enjoyed teaching — and something else about myself too:
Sometimes even things that did not quite have a category when we first started them.
Gemology eventually opened doors into education, research, jewellery and entrepreneurship. I kept seeing possibilities for what else we could do with what we knew and what we had.
Then in 2015, one of those possibilities became The Gem Museum in Singapore.
In 2022, questions about the value of gemstones and jewellery led me into yet another world: financial planning. I wanted to understand how what we value connects with insurance, investment, wealth and eventually legacy.
Alongside all of this has been another constant in my life: people. My Christian faith has kept me deeply involved in ministry, mentoring, teaching and bringing people together.
On paper, these may look like very different worlds.
But perhaps the more interesting question isn’t why I have done so many different things.
It is:
Learning to recognise value —
and build on it.
Working with gemstones has taught me a great deal about value. A gemstone can look quite ordinary until you understand what you are looking at. Its identity, rarity, quality, origin and story can completely change the way you see it.
And price alone does not always tell you why something matters. A piece of jewellery may have financial value, but it may also carry memories, relationships, craftsmanship, history or a story that makes it irreplaceable to the person who owns it.
OPPORTUNITIES · RESOURCES
Some are tangible. Many are not.
Yet sometimes we become so accustomed to what we have that we stop noticing it. Sometimes, we may even forget what is there — or why it matters.
Discovery often comes before direction.
Building and curating The Gem Museum over the last 10 years has taught me a lot about discovery.
A museum is a place of discovery. We encounter something we did not know before, notice something we may have overlooked, or learn to see something differently.
The same is true in life.
Before deciding what comes next, it helps to understand where we are, what matters to us, what we have, and perhaps what we have overlooked or forgotten.
This is why DISCOVER comes first in my five-step process.
It doesn’t mean we need to have everything figured out before moving forward. It simply gives us a better place from which to begin.
Life • Wealth • Legacy
Life • Wealth • Legacy isn’t something I invented first and then tried to fit my life into.
In many ways, it is the language I eventually found to make sense of it all.
Through the different worlds I have worked in, I have come to see that life is much more than what we do for a living. It is about who we are, what matters to us, the people around us, and how we choose to live the years we have been given.
Wealth, too, is much more than money. It includes the resources and capacity that enable us to live — our health, time, knowledge, relationships, skills, opportunities, experiences and, of course, our financial and tangible assets.
And legacy is more than what we leave behind when we are gone. It is also about what we choose to carry forward — what we preserve, develop, contribute, and eventually place into the hands of others.
Underlying all three is an idea that is deeply shaped by my Christian faith: stewardship.
I believe that much of what we have in life has been entrusted to us. We may not have chosen everything we received, but we can choose how we respond to it — what we value, what we protect, what we grow, and what we eventually pass on.
That is how Life • Wealth • Legacy came together for me.
Not as three separate parts of life, but as different ways of looking at the same life.
What comes next?
I don’t believe there is one answer to what a good life should look like. We each have different stories, responsibilities, resources and seasons of life.
Perhaps that is why I value conversation so much.
A good conversation creates space to discover what matters, recognise what is already there, explore possibilities, and consider what might come next.
I don’t always know where a conversation will lead — and I think that’s okay.
So if something here has made you stop and think about your own Life • Wealth • Legacy, perhaps we can start there.
LET’S HAVE A CONVERSATION