Crystal's Notes 6 April

Dear Community

I am so thrilled to announce that I’ve just signed a MOU with Singapore’s e2i Employment & Employability Institute. This means Forest Wolf will be collaborating with e2i much more to help professionals level up their careers, and unleash their fullest potentials.

At the opening, I also ran a workshop to a full-house of 150 attendees. I shared my insider’s guide to career success and as always, the courage and vulnerability of the participants moved and inspired me — they shared worries on bringing up the question of promotion, on surviving in the age of AI, and the difficulties of building relationships with stakeholders at work.

Every week, when I run my weekly AMA, I also get a glimpse into your inner thoughts and worries, and this is a great privilege that I do not take for granted.

How did this journey begin? Let me take you back 6 years, when I got a cold email asking me if I was interested in training the leaders of 14 biopharma companies. It was to be financed by the Singapore government. I had ignored the email because I thought it was a prank but after I figured it was legit, we ended up developing a programme code-named Project Zodiac, and went on to train more than 1000 leaders. This marked our first collaboration with e2i.

We are so proud to be working with e2i on a bigger and broader mission to redefine the way professionals approach their careers.

But what if I told you my journey here has not been an easy one?

I’ve had to deal with a lot of stuff — a miscarriage, a divorce, and a retrenchment. I did not have a mentor or people to guide me then, and this is what drives my content and work today. I want to be able to help people with what I had taken years and years to learn.

A podcast I did this week was on a topic that is close to my heart. It is about struggling and how we can build resilience to get over the hard things in life.

You can listen to the full episode here to understand the components of resilience, and the 5 gardens in which we have to nurture in order to grow our ability to be resilient. It is not by chance that our gardens will flourish or wilt. Harvest your gardens well, and you will have the fruits of your labour to nourish you for time to come.

Friends, thank you for celebrating my milestones with me. Know that I am right here with you, growing that bumper crop of resilience resources together, so that we can deal with all the hard knocks life throws us. But know too that I am also here to dream big and thrive together with you in this exhilarating journey ahead!

Much love,

Crystal