One Sneak Peek Into An Intersection of Heart, Mind and Action

For Shiao-Yin, age isn’t a countdown. It’s a compass. 

A marker of how far she’s come, and how much more purposeful she wants to be.

From co-founding The Thought Collective to serving as a Nominated Member of Parliament, and now acting as a spiritual director for various companies, 

Shiao-Yin has spent her life asking one big question: How do we live with deeper alignment between what we believe, what we do, and who we are?

In our conversation, she shared candid reflections on leadership, failure, faith, and what it truly means to live a whole, integrated life, 

 even when the world around you feels fragmented.

1. Finding purpose in Life

“I've always been someone who’s more driven by purpose than by a fixed plan. That’s probably why my personal and professional journey hasn’t been a straight line—it’s taken a few unexpected turns. Purpose has a funny way of leading you into roles and experiences you never would’ve predicted.

One of the biggest turning points in my life was during university, when I became a Christian. Before that, I didn’t really have a clear sense of what life was all about. After I converted, the first big question I wrestled with was whether I should even be an architect. If life is really about using our gifts to serve others, then what did that look like for me?

The thing is, having a sense of purpose is great—it gives you direction—but it doesn’t hand you a roadmap. There are so many different ways you can try to live it out. For me, every professional step I took was like an experiment—another attempt at figuring out how to stay true to that deeper calling.

At the core of it, my purpose is pretty simple: when I reach the end of my life, I want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That’s the Christian framing. But even in a broader, more secular sense, I just want to leave the world better than I found it. I believe I’ve been given certain strengths and talents, and I want to use them meaningfully. Life isn’t something to be wasted.

One of the first career shifts I made actually came from a pretty casual conversation. I was interning at an architecture firm, and a colleague said to me, kind of jokingly, “If you already know you don’t want to do this, then why are you doing it?” He probably didn’t mean much by it, but it really hit me. He was right.

I think that’s something young people have to figure out for themselves—this idea of discernment. Like, is it practical or even possible to walk away from something when you already know deep down it’s not what you want to be doing?”

2. Starting the Thought Collective

“I started Thought Collective because, honestly, it just felt purposeful.

Before that, I had been running a few dotcoms, but this idea came out of conversations I had with some friends from university and teachers I knew from public schools. Everyone described it a bit differently, but the common thread was clear: there’s something not quite right with how young people in Singapore are coming out of the education system. They’re graduating without a strong sense of who they are or what they want to do.

That really struck a chord with me. It felt like a meaningful problem to work on. Looking back, I think that was one of the first times I made a decision based on what I did know—rather than getting stuck on everything I didn’t know. It felt like the right thing to do at that point in time.

Getting the business off the ground didn’t happen overnight—it took a few years. And honestly, during that time, my mum had no idea what I was doing. To her, it probably looked like I was just giving tuition. But I knew it was more than that. I wasn’t just teaching—I was stepping into something I believed in. I was following what I knew to be my purpose: to live life intentionally and meaningfully.”

3. Difficulties faced during entrepreneurship

“There were a lot of highs and lows throughout that whole journey. We started Thought Collective back in 2002 and officially wrapped it up in 2021. The first 10 years were great—things moved along almost effortlessly. We were lucky. The learning centre did really well, the magazine took off, and even our first few restaurants were successful.

But things started to get bumpy around the 10-year mark.

When you’re young and your business takes off, it’s easy to think you’ve got it all figured out—but that’s when the mistakes start creeping in. Opening small cafes was one thing, but we jumped into a 300-seater restaurant without really being ready for it. That decision ended up saddling us with debt for the next 10 years.

We were still figuring things out—managing over 100 employees, tackling HR and leadership issues… it was like putting out fires constantly, one after another.

Eventually, we decided it was time to call it a day. I took the consulting arm of the business and ran with it, building a new team of 11. That part of the business had always been close to my heart—I started it, and I knew I wanted to see it through.

Going through all those people-related challenges over two decades gave me a new sense of clarity about why I’m doing culture change work today. I genuinely believe people deserve to work in places that give them life, not drain it from them. So many work environments are quietly soul-crushing—people feel stuck, unappreciated, and constantly burnt out.

These days, I see myself as a kind of general practitioner for organisations dealing with people problems. I listen like a doctor would, hear the symptoms, make a quick diagnosis, and then work with them to figure out a treatment plan.

To me, it’s unacceptable that so many people feel like their jobs are sucking the life out of them. One reason I chose entrepreneurship in the first place was because I didn’t want to suffer under other people’s bad decisions—but of course, I ended up facing the consequences of my own. Still, at least I had the agency to shape things the way I believed they should be. And now, all of that experience is what I bring into the consulting work I do today.”

4. Experience in the Singapore Parliament

“Honestly, I had zero intention of ever entering Parliament.

In Singapore, there’s a process where different sectors can nominate people they think would be good representatives. Some folks from the People’s Youth sector put my name forward and asked if I’d be open to the challenge.

At first, I said no. I had a lot on my plate, and I didn’t feel like being a Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) was aligned with my purpose. But after turning it down, I started thinking—wait a minute, I’ve always told students to say yes to opportunities, even if they don’t feel ready or even if it wasn’t their first choice. And here I was, doing the exact opposite.

It made me reflect: if everyone who’s offered a chance to step up just says no, then how are we going to fill those leadership gaps in our country?

So I decided to go for it.

That first year in Parliament was tough. I had so many doubts. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a politician. What am I doing here?

But I soon realised that if I kept telling myself what I wasn’t, I’d have nothing to contribute. I had to anchor myself in who I was. I was a woman—so I had something to say about women’s issues. I was an educator—so I could speak on education. I was an entrepreneur—so I knew what it was like to build something from scratch.

Speaking up doesn’t come naturally to many of us in Singapore. We’re not raised to see our voices as powerful. But once I got clear on my identity, it gave me the courage to speak up about things that mattered.

And one identity that became especially important was being a voter. I wasn’t part of any political party, so I didn’t have a party line to stick to. But I was an individual voter—just like everyone else out there—and I realised that gave me a unique space. I could bring the concerns of ordinary Singaporeans into Parliament, especially those who don’t usually get a chance to be heard.”

5. Future goals and reflecting on the past

                                                                                                                                                     “I’m turning 50 in two years, and honestly, I don’t think the future will look drastically different for me. At my core, I’m still someone who wants to live with meaning and purpose all the way to the end. I’ve never had much patience for doing things just for the sake of it—especially if they feel empty or joyless.

What has changed, though, is that I’ve become more confident about using my voice. I’ve grown more certain about speaking up when I see things that aren’t working, especially when they’re making life harder or more joyless for others. That’s something I didn’t care as deeply about when I was 19—but now it really matters to me.

Lately, in this next phase of life, I’ve been learning how to be a spiritual director. It’s made me realise that many of the problems we see in organisations and systems aren’t just technical or operational—they’re spiritual. People are often out of sync with themselves. There’s a misalignment between what they believe, how they feel, and what they actually do.

For too long, so many of us have lived fragmented lives. What I hope to do moving forward is to help more people bridge that gap—help them align their work with what they truly believe in. Because when people live more whole and integrated lives, not only are they better off, but the world is too.”

Connect with Shiao-Yin here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiaoyinkuik/

Follow our telegram channel: https://t.me/onesneakpeekinto

And that is all for today’s One Sneak Peek Into.

Stay tuned for more insights from our interview series as we continue to explore the stories of trailblazers breaking barriers and redefining success.