Post by Desiree Pakiam

🇸🇬✈️ A recent debate asked whether Singaporeans romanticise life overseas while overlooking what works remarkably well at home. I understand the point. Singapore is safe, efficient, connected and deeply liveable. The MRT arrives. The systems work. Family is close. A meal can be excellent without requiring a financial-impact assessment. 🍜 But leaving was never about rejecting Singapore. It was about finding out what else I could become when I was no longer operating inside the version of myself that home already knew. London has been expensive, grey, chaotic and occasionally held together by delayed trains and administrative optimism. 🚇🌧️ But it has also given me room to experiment. Alongside my work, I have been building a research-based startup with my co-founders at Copenhagen Business School. I have pitched to a Danish government VC panel several times, presented at a conference in Brussels, and learned to be more willing to put ideas into the world before they are perfectly finished. 🚀 That may not fit the usual Singaporean mould of a neat, linear path. But it has made me more curious, more commercially minded, and more willing to try to make a difference through technology. I do not think Singapore failed me. I think it gave me enough grounding to take bigger risks elsewhere. I am now looking for London-based opportunities where that mix is useful: programme delivery, digital operations, AI-enabled workflow improvement, stakeholder engagement, and practical experimentation across markets. 💡 Singapore gave me functioning systems. London has given me permission to test myself. Both have shaped how I work. The discussion that prompted this reflection: https://lnkd.in/epwrtuQK And a reminder that non-linear paths can still lead somewhere remarkable: https://lnkd.in/ePCwV3zW #LondonJobs #ProgrammeManagement #DigitalTransformation #AIOperations #MarTech #SingaporeansAbroad