Meet Avalyn

I’m a former Corporate Warrior turned Executive and Embodied Leadership Coach.

Born in New Zealand to Straits Chinese parents, I spent most of my life in Singapore – 40 years! – with a few years spent in Malaysia and Canada, before moving back to Auckland in 2020.

I’ve been a chameleon all my life, never feeling like I truly belonged anywhere, whether in terms of country, culture, or profession. Always blending into the background, I shape-shifted to fit the environment, friend groups, communities, and organisations. But at the same time, I was always a little kooky (also like a chameleon). My thoughts and ideas would spring new shoots haphazardly, making me quite the clown in brainstorming and games. Through my youth and adulthood, this paradox of “fitting in” and “standing out” pulled me in random, meandering directions.

My career took a similarly random path. Aside from a short stint in stage work and television acting in the early 90s, I started my career as a lawyer back in 2000 in one of the top Singapore law firms, but it just wasn’t for me. After a few years in law, I moved between industries and jobs, going with the flow through word-of-mouth referrals.

Over the next 15 years, I would work at a technology practice in a public relations agency, a branding firm, headed account management in financial services looking after private banks, did brand and product development in a start-up skincare brand, project management for an applied genetics firm for the timber industry, learning & development in a primary industries company, and consulted for luxury goods businesses (see my Bio here).

In 2015, I finally nailed it: I became a coach and the dots finally connected. It was just after my EMBA at INSEAD and Tsinghua School of Economics and Management. Through this program, I discovered that coaching combined my love for personal development, mindfulness, and my corporate life. The two things that have stayed with me from that experience are words from my coach, Kate, “to become the most sophisticated version of myself”, and my coach mentor, Brigitte, to list down all my skills and experiences because we so often forget the depths and breadths of what we know.

That was a turning point for me and becoming a coach was the first mindful choice in my career. It’s been extraordinary how things fell into place when I made the decision to coach, and went from “go with the flow” to “being in flow”.