Angela Lim – a 29-year-old doctor and entrepreneur from Auckland, New Zealand, was one of the 200 Leaders of Tomorrow at the 48th St. Gallen Symposium. This is where she met the man who would later become the investor of her start-up. I got the chance to talk to her recently and ask her about her seemingly crazy decision to quit her job after eight years of training.

Angela had been working as a trainee paediatrician in Auckland when she was invited to the symposium. At that point, she had already been thinking about changing her career path and giving up clinical medicine but did not have a detailed plan yet. This all changed during her stay in St. Gallen last May. She met someone who decided to invest into her start-up idea, leading her to quit her job back in New Zealand – after more than eight years of university and specialty training. What might appear crazy to some, was an easy decision for her. Reflecting an openness to seizing opportunities such as the one she was presented with at the symposium.

The idea of founding her own start-up in the healthcare sector had been in the back of her head for a few years now. During her studies and her work as a doctor, she got quite a good insight into the healthcare system and the existing problems within. She found that there was and still is a lot of potential for technology to transform the current system.

Angela is currently working with her co-founder on developing Clearhead – said start-up. The idea behind it is actually very simple. They want to provide a platform for people to share the challenges they are facing and then be matched up with resources and professional help. The platform also provides the users with self-management tools to help them work towards overcoming their challenges.

While her co-founder develops the software, she is mostly involved with stakeholder engagement. For her this is an important process in understanding the problem they are solving and then codesigning the solution. Making sure that they bring people along the journey and tell the story of the start-up well.

Impressions of the 48th St. Gallen Symposium

The job she is doing now differs quite a bit from what she was doing before. But she does not regret leaving and feels that she is able to tap into more of her potential and abilities. Angela likes being creative with decision-making and executing solutions in a timely manner. So she appreciates the pace of change in the private sector and the fact that she can make a positive impact on a larger scale, compared to her work at the hospital.

Naturally, Angela is a bit anxious that everything might not work out the way she and her co-founder have planned. “It is one thing to believe you are providing a new solution for a certain issue, but you will never really know. We are just waiting to be at that point where we can see what the public thinks of it”. She feels that their platform is still very abstract to most people but of course, she hopes it will be a success when they launch.

The foremost goal for Clearhead is the launch of their platform later this month. She can barely wait to have an actual product at hand to show what they have been working on for the last six months. If all goes well, the ultimate goal for them would be to go global.

We wish her all the best for the release of Clearhead’s platform and are looking forward to welcoming her as a Leader of Tomorrow once again at the 49^th St. Gallen Symposium.