Wellness and Fitness Services

My corporate career was going well. That was the problem. 

I had spent more than a decade in digital media across India, Singapore, and the APAC region. The career gave me stability, growth, and identity. But over time, while I was progressing externally, I was no longer connected to the direction I was heading.

It was not dissatisfaction. It was a misalignment.

The question that kept surfacing was not “should I leave?” It was quieter than that: if I wait until retirement to find out whether this work could become something real, will I be able to live with that answer? I could not.

If your career looks fine on paper but inside it doesn’t feel right, you know what I mean.

From Personal Practice to Purpose

Around the time my role in Singapore became redundant, I had started exploring different wellness practices, including running and yoga. What began as a way to use that transition period productively led me to complete my first yoga teacher training.

The more I practiced and taught, the more connected I felt to the work. I found meaning in the smaller moments: adults leaving calmer, children learning to notice their breath from a young age, and families using simple tools to bring more ease into daily life.

After a few months, I returned to a corporate role. The job gave me stability, but it no longer gave me the same meaning as teaching yoga and mindfulness.

From 2015 to 2023, I continued building this work alongside my full-time career and family life. Most weekends I was teaching, learning, creating programs, or working with adults and children. It never felt heavy because I enjoyed it.

Eventually, I specialized in children’s yoga and mindfulness. Working with children taught me that supporting them requires more than teaching movement. It requires understanding behavior, emotions, attention, creativity, and connection.

As interest grew among parents, schools, and communities, I saw this work was more than teaching yoga on the mat. It was about helping children build self-regulation, confidence, resilience, self-awareness, and meaningful connections.

Passion and Purpose Alone Are Not Enough

One of the biggest factors that helped me move from interest to impact was consistency.

For years, I kept building alongside my corporate career. I did not leave immediately because I had not yet created a viable model that could support both the mission and the practical realities of life.

I started turning my side project into a sustainable platform. Physical classes could only reach so many people, so I asked: if I wanted to have more impact, how could this work go beyond live sessions?

That shift led me to build digital resources, online programs, flagship products, teacher-training certifications, and a broader vision for children’s well-being. I developed a digital kids’ wellness platform, launched my flagship Kids Yoga Teacher Training certification, expanded my work with communities, parents, educators, and families, and deepened my focus on special-needs yoga and inclusive well-being.

What began as individual classes gradually evolved into an ecosystem.

This is where many passion-led ventures face their real test. Passion creates momentum, but sustainable growth needs structure, systems, adaptability, and a long-term vision. This was not only a career transition; it was turning a passion project into a purpose-led business with structure, patience, and consistency.

The Moment I Had to Choose

For years, I balanced two parallel careers: my corporate role and the wellness work I had been building alongside it.

A few questions kept resurfacing. Would I be financially secure without corporate income? Why leave when my career is progressing well? Would I regret not giving my wellness work a genuine opportunity?

The turning point came when changes in my role and team structure pulled my energy away from the work I had spent nearly a decade building. Rather than making an impulsive decision, I took a sabbatical.

That pause gave me space to reflect. Could I commit fully to the work I had built? Was waiting until retirement really better? Would I regret not exploring this path?

The answer became clear. There would never be a completely risk-free moment. The difference was that I had the energy, experience, and momentum to pursue it now.

By then, BlissYogaSG was no longer a passion project. It has evolved into children’s yoga programs, teacher training, school partnerships, inclusive wellness offerings and a digital learning platform.

Build With Courage, But Also With Grounding

Today, when people ask me how to leave a job and follow their passion, I do not tell them to be impulsive. I tell them to start small, while still working, and let consistency give them clarity. Build a structure around the passion. Plan practically, especially around finances and responsibilities. Keep learning and evolving. And take the leap only when your inner clarity and your outer foundation begin to meet.

That moment will not feel completely safe. But it will feel real.

Today, my professional background continues to support my business. BlissYogaSG has grown into a wider ecosystem, with 500+ students certified worldwide as kids yoga and mindfulness teachers, globally recognised Yoga Alliance-accredited teacher training certifications specialising in children’s well-being, a digital-first children’s wellness platform with 60+ pre-recorded programs, and an upcoming Special Needs Kids Yoga Teacher Training. 

My work in children’s and family well-being has taught me that real change often begins with adults. When we support parents, educators, and teachers, they are better able to support children.

That is the work I chose, or maybe the work chose me.

Looking back, it does not feel like I left one career for another. It feels like I slowly built the courage, structure, and clarity to come home to the work I was meant to do.

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How overlooked markets, funding blind spots, and embedded bias are defining the next frontier of health innovation

 Imagine receiving approval in 2017 for a patent on something as simple as a sponge or a pen, an everyday object whose basic function seems obvious. Yet this is essentially what happened when my patent for a new type of hygiene device for women was approved. The experience revealed something that every operator in health innovation eventually confronts: the most significant market gaps are often the ones that have been hiding in plain sight. For those of us building in women's health, this is not an abstract observation. It is the daily operating reality.

Today, we may finally be reaching a turning point, but it will require founders, investors, and operators to make decisions different from those they have made in the past.

I was born 55 years ago into a society where my father, the man, was the breadwinner, while my mother, the woman, worked part-time and managed all the housework. From the very first moment I entered this world, I was exposed to patterns of gender inequality that became subconsciously ingrained. It was always clear to me that I was not expected to perform or achieve the same accomplishments as my older brother. I grew up like many of my peers, sharing similar patterns of thought and expectations.

As an Israeli, I knew that when I grew up, I would serve in the army, but meaningful roles, pilot, fighter, would be closed to me because of my gender. I also knew I would retire earlier than men. The childhood stories of Snow White and Cinderella created in my mind the dream that one day a perfect, strong prince would take care of the family and me, and we would build together. That has since changed; women in Israel can now serve in almost all roles, but the mental frameworks those expectations created take far longer to rewrite.

It took me many years to recognise some of my own blind spots regarding gender inequality and to gradually remove them one by one. These were things I had taken for granted without realising they did not have to be this way. One such moment occurred when a company called Egal introduced a new toilet-paper-style sanitary pad that solved a long and painful problem shared by menstruators around the world. A relatively simple technological solution, yet it had not existed before. This is a strong example of how gender-focused technology can close gaps that arise directly from anatomical differences, gaps that went unaddressed not because the solution was technically complex, but because the people controlling research priorities and funding did not experience the problem themselves.

As a woman entrepreneur working in women's health for over 20 years, I have experienced firsthand many of the structural blind spots surrounding gender gaps - in funding, in research, in market assumptions. These gaps were partly created by anatomical differences between the sexes, which means health innovation sits at the doorway of closing them. The opportunity is significant. So is the friction.

The Funding Gap Is Not Only A Man's Problem

Women often believe that these gaps exist only in men's thinking. In my experience, that is not the case. One of the main factors still holding back women's health innovation is the blind spots in women's own decision-making - our internalised biases about risk, return, and what constitutes a serious investment opportunity.

It is no secret that women invest significantly less than men, and when they do, they tend toward more conservative risk profiles. When we examine how the wealthiest women in the world deploy their resources, we often see a preference for philanthropic causes over early-stage innovation. Many of the funds created specifically to support women, including those offered by organisations such as Pivotal, founded by Melinda Gates, are structured for non-profits and are not accessible to commercial ventures like mine.

 This matters because risk capital is what turns early-stage health innovation into workable products. Women's health companies cannot expect male investors to deeply understand problems they do not personally experience; it is only natural that people hesitate to fund problems they do not fully grasp. But significant change will only come when women investors and operators recognise and actively override these blind spots. The frustration is legitimate. The solution requires action, not just acknowledgment.

The Systemic Risk Hiding In The Data

Beyond funding, a more systemic risk is emerging that operators cannot afford to ignore. Our mental frameworks are usually shaped in ways that lead women to perceive themselves as less capable and to expect less of their own potential. Artificial intelligence, which is increasingly influential in decision-making across industries, has been shown to contain inherent gender biases. The reason is clear: large language models are trained with vast collections of published text, much of which reflects centuries of gender inequality. As a result, instead of helping to eliminate existing gaps, these systems risk preserving them within our collective digital infrastructure.

This is not a philosophical concern. It is an operational one. AI is now embedded in hiring decisions, medical diagnostics, research prioritisation, and investment screening. If these systems carry embedded gender biases, they will not simply reflect the inequalities society is trying to overcome; they will accelerate them at scale.

A Better World For Everyone

More than forty years ago, humanity walked on the Moon through bold technological innovation. Yet here on Earth, medicine still struggles to properly address conditions such as endometriosis, menopause, fibromyalgia, and many other health challenges influencing millions of women globally. These are not niche concerns. They represent some of the largest addressable gaps within modern healthcare, and some of the most significant commercial opportunities for founders and investors willing to look.

The solutions exist, or can be created. Gender-focused technologies and research have the potential to dramatically improve women's health and close longstanding gaps.

But the market will not self-correct. It requires operators- founders, investors, researchers, and executives, to make deliberate choices about where they direct capital, talent, and attention.

Those who build here first will not only advance women's health. They will have shaped one of the most consequential and underserved markets of the next decade.