and still, she’ll rise / uhn/ / stil/ / sheel/ / rahyz/
LYNN YEOW ENTREPRENEUR WITH MULTIPLE BUSINESSES
The greatest origins stories always begin in the underbelly of society, and usually with a young person faced with an unforgiving cauldron of heat and fire. For Lynn Yeow, that cauldron was the bowels of Tanglin Halt where she grew up with her grandmother in a tworoom rental flat. Tanglin Halt was a rough neighbourhood then and, unfortunately, Yeow’s grandmother favoured boys over girls, the result of a mindset shaped by a patriarchal era.
Yeow’s mother was a single parent and a beautician who owned a shop at People’s Park Centre. If Yeow didn’t head back home after school, she would make her way to her mother’s outlet – a small, two-bed operation with barely enough room for her mother and the customers, let alone a scrawny, young girl trying to make sense of the world.
“I would go to the hair salon next door when my mum’s shop was packed and they would feed me biscuits,” Yeow remembers fondly. “People’s Park Centre was very rough back then, and my mum was always worried about me every time I came. But the other shopkeepers were friends and always watched out for this little girl with her single mum.”
Her mum remarried and divorced again, and through all that family turmoil and borderline poverty,
Yeow grew up to become a feisty, independent teenager. Even after having a mild acid thrown into her eyes during a robbery on her way back to Tanglin Halt one night, her zest for life never waned.
“Growing up, I always kind of knew what I wanted to do,” shares Yeow. After graduating from Nanyang Polytechnic, she secured a role as a marketing communications assistant at the Singapore Marriott. It didn’t pay much – “I think I took home
$900 after CPF!” – but it gave her an opportunity to prove her mettle while always keeping her family uppermost in her mind, in spite of their sometimes testy relationship. She even gave half of her salary to her mother and survived on the rest.
Nevertheless, she would occasionally splurge on luxury items to reward herself. In her case, luxury meant a packet of pricey chocolate chip cookies from Mezza9 at Grand Hyatt Singapore or a meal at the nowdefunct Glow Juice Bar and Cafe at the Hilton.
And now for the part of her story many know: Yeow became a hospitality hotshot, doing so well at the Marriott that other hotels started to take notice of her. She later became the youngest manager at Raffles
Hotel and then opened Pan Pacific Singapore, Capella and a slew of other top hotels. She also started Silver Spoon, her successful hospitality branding and communications company focusing on F&B, opened more businesses and exited a couple of them. Oh, and along the way, she married Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur Beppe De Vito, and had four children together.
But Yeow never forgot her roots as a sickly, young girl finding her way through life and fed royal jelly and cod liver oil by a concerned mother who spent almost everything she earned on her daughter so the latter could grow up strong, healthy and wise.
They say it is what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.
For Yeow, she will never forget the hardships she endured, and she will let them define. Now that’s the mark of a true warrior.