Peggy Choi learnt what resilience was at 14, when she had major spinal surgery and was hospitalised for two months. Fast-forward, now she's jumped into the world of entrepreneurship, faced-off gender stereotypes and proved countless investors wrong with the creation of her startup, Lynk Global—a knowledge sharing platform used across the globe
In the Turning Points series, we talk to a Generation T honouree about the challenges they have faced throughout their life, and discuss how it has gotten them to where they are today.
Early into her finance career, Peggy Choi was quick to realise that connections play a big part in your personal and professional success. “When you talk to the right person, it opens your eyes to opportunities you mightn’t have been aware of,” she says.
“At the time I was trying to talk to the right people for my own career and personal choices,” she says. “I was trying to determine what kind of business and life I wanted to commit my time to. I was trying to find my calling.”
Her struggle to get connected with the people who could help her further her career sparked an idea—what if she could connect people with reputable experts from different industries online?
To find out, she quit her job in finance and ventured into the startup space. The risk paid off.
In 2015 she founded Lynk Global, a platform where businesses can gain access to a pool of mentors and experts. Now, Lynk Global’s network has more than 780,000 knowledge partners and has pioneered the idea of selling knowledge as a service on a global scale.
Here, Choi tells Gen.T about some of the biggest moments in her life—turning points that shaped her personal and professional journey and set her on the path to who she is today.
"I had major spinal surgery at 14" and learnt that not everything is rosy
When I was about 14 years old, I had to have major spinal surgery because I was suffering from scoliosis, Choi says. “I’d had it since I was about 10, but it was idiopathic—meaning doctors didn’t know why I had it, and it was pretty bad by the time I was 14. It was a major surgery and I had to stay in the hospital for about two months.”
“They had to put a rod in my spine and I had to relearn how to just hold myself up. I had to relearn how to walk,” she says. “I remember I was really upset because I had to stay in the hospital while everyone else was out on summer vacation. And as a kid I was really into sports; I had done ballet since I was three but after the surgery, I couldn’t do any more contact sports, which was really crushing for me at that age.”
“It took me a couple of years to get used to how to move post-surgery. But I was rebellious! By the end of the second year I got back into dancing and the doctor wasn’t too happy about it,” Choi laughs.
“This was a real turning point for me because I learnt a lot about myself—going through that stress and change and understanding that some things are outside of your control. You can do your best to try to craft your path but you can’t plan everything.”.
Choi says that she applies what she learnt from her childhood experience to her life now. “Resilience is key,” she says. “Not everything is rosy and perfect, so how do you take something that can be distressing and try to find something positive from the situation? I think it’s all about keeping that growth mindset.”
See also: Turning Points: Comic Sakdiyah Ma’ruf On Battling Gender Inequality With Humour
In the initial years people would often tell us that our vision was too big—that it's too tough and that we won’t get there… But whenever I get told it won’t work by investors, I get more energy and want to prove them wrong.