2024 Year in Review – Sneak peek at 2025

Sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward. Do you ever feel like you just keep running from one thing to the next with no time to actually stop, breathe and reflect? You reach one milestone, only to immediately start planning for the next one. What’s the point of life if you don’t stop to enjoy it once in a while? There is no better time to do that than now. Those “year in review” retrospectives are everywhere from your Google photos to the New York Times. They almost force you to stop and reflect even if you don’t want to.

2024 may not have been the year that you wanted. Things probably happened that were outside of your control.  Or perhaps you had a fantastic year full of new experiences, personal triumphs and professional conquests. Now you are wondering how you top that for 2025. Whatever 2024 brought you, it’s worthwhile to reflect on it and learn from it. Check out this 2024 reflection worksheet and 2025 planner to get you off on the right foot for the new year.

Since I’m asking you to be vulnerable and share about your reflections from 2024 and your planning for 2025, I’ll do the same and share a bit about the year that was for me and RC HR Consulting. This has been quite a year for me, with moving countries, watching my toddler blossom into a wonderful little human being and expanding RC HR Consulting into Singapore. Here are a few of the experiences that really “made” 2024 for me.

Family Living in Asia for 17 years means that we are far away from family. Luckily this year we were blessed to have my mom and stepdad visit us in Hong Kong. It was my mom’s seventh visit and a first for my stepdad. It’s always interesting when you see a place that you know so well through the eyes of someone else. Small things that I’ve gotten used to (like how rude everyone is in HK or how there is no concept of personal space) suddenly become really new again. It was a refreshing reminder of all of the ways that Hong Kong is a unique place. We also got to spend a few weeks with my in-laws in the UK, hanging out with them in London and traveling together to Scotland. Now that I’m a parent, I realize how important it is for my daughter to get to know her cousins and for my husband and I to spend time with our own parents. No matter how hard we work or how far away we live, there is no greater priority than family.

Travel 2024 is the first year since Covid that travel really felt normal again. I did my first “girls trip” without my toddler with my good friend Queenie Jiang for a long weekend in Bangkok. I’ll never forget that sense of freedom the first time I stepped out of the hotel with no stroller, no giant bag full of baby snacks and no itinerary. I walked down the street, completely unencumbered and could do anything I wanted. It was liberating and something all parents should do at least 1x per year. We wanted to travel to Japan again before our move to Singapore (since the flight time extends from 4 hours to 7 hours), so we spend a couple of days in Nagoya. Although the weather wasn’t great, the fabulous food and lovely people make a visit to Japan always worthwhile.  After we left Hong Kong, we had an extended family holiday in Isle of Skye, Scotland. The scenery was breathtaking and we stayed in some beautiful AirBnB’s, including a castle! Just this month, we spent a few days in Bali, one of my favorite destinations in Asia. We hadn’t visited since before the pandemic and it was so lovely to be back in a pool villa, experiencing the Balinese hospitality and long massages. Even with a toddler in tow, we still managed to relax. We’ve got a few trips lined up already for 2025, including a long weekend in Hong Kong for the Standard Chartered marathon. In 2025, I anticipate a lot more business travel around the region as I deliver training to our financial services clients with Hatwell Group.

Taylor Swift

I was so lucky to snag tickets to Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” in London in August. I’d never been to Wembley Stadium and it was a truly surreal experience to see it completely full of 90,000 people, all singing and dancing in unison. It was a real party atmosphere and the evening felt timeless. Thanks to my good friend Sally Tong we dressed for the occasion, wearing sparkles with arms full of friendship bracelets. My feet were hurting after standing up for 3 hours and cheering on Taylor, so I can’t imagine how she must have felt after running around and singing for all of that time. It was really special to be part of something so iconic.

Goodbye Hong Kong

With a huge amount of mixed emotions, I said goodbye to Hong Kong in July after 17 years of living and working there. I really love Hong Kong but I also knew that it was time to move on to a new adventure. I spent my last few months in Hong Kong doing all of the things that I enjoy: hiking, wakesurfing, going to the beach, mahjong, going to pub quiz, stand-up paddle boarding, kiddie play dates, terrible Marvel movies, and every kind of Chinese cuisine possible (dim sum, hot pot, congee, etc). I spent time with friends and family (and friends who feel like family) as much as possible. Although Hong Kong and Singapore aren’t far apart (just a 4-hour flight), I knew that once you leave a place, you can never really go back. Things will always be different. I cherish the friends that I made in Hong Kong and all of the amazing people that I met through my work and my personal pursuits. I miss them all.

Hello Singapore To say I was nervous about moving to Singapore is an understatement. Hong Kong and Singapore have a love/hate relationship (similar to L.A. and New York). There is no end to the comparisons of the two places – from quality of life to cost of living to nightlife, it’s endless. My friends in Hong Kong all said I would be bored in Singapore and I would want to move back to Hong Kong right away. I’m happy to say that is not the case (so far). Four months into our journey in Singapore and I am absolutely loving it. Singapore is a really easy place to settle. The transition was very smooth. There are enough similarities with Hong Kong (great public transport, Chinese culture, etc) that nothing really feels too foreign. We feel lucky to have settled into a great neighborhood in the East Coast of Singapore that is close to parks, restaurants and amenities. We really feel like we hit the jackpot! And best of all, we’ve been able to reconnect with many of our close friends who now call Singapore home. They’ve been invaluable to helping us settle in and making us feel like this move is the right one.

RC HR Consulting – Year in Review This has been a year of tremendous growth for RC HR Consulting. But it didn’t start out that way. At the beginning of 2024, I wasn’t really sure what was next for me professionally. With the move to Singapore looming large, I couldn’t decide if I should continue to invest in RC HR Consulting or consider other options. It was a period of a lot of professional uncertainty. After exploring many options and having a lot of conversations, I decided to throw in all of my chips on RC HR Consulting and commit to building it.  I pivoted our focus at RC HR Consulting to supporting female senior leaders in Human Resources who feel stuck to help them love their work or find work they love. I refined our product offerings (1. 1:1 executive & career coaching 2. Job search accelerator program 3. Personal branding (resumes, LinkedIn profiles, interview coaching), built new packages and programs and stepped up my social media presence. As a result, I’ve worked with 40 individual and corporate clients this year. I’m humbled that 70% of my client work came through referrals, including three former clients who came back to work with me again. I’m appreciative of their trust. I want to thank all of my clients who worked with me in 2024. I’ve enjoyed supporting every one of you. And of course – the biggest news of all for RC HR Consulting – the opening of our Singapore office! I’m thrilled to expand the geographic reach of RC HR and to support more female senior HR leaders in Singapore and South East Asia. I have a renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm with this expansion and I can’t wait for what 2025 will bring.

RC HR Consulting – Plans for 2025 I have big plans for RC HR Consulting in 2025. And I’ll share a few of them with you here. Making them public will hold me accountable to actually getting them done! First is the launch of my group Job Search Accelerator program for senior female leaders in HR. I’ve been running this program as a 1:1 coaching program over the last year with great results and feedback from my clients. Now I’m ready to launch it to a wider audience at a lower price point so it is more accessible to those who need it. It will be a supportive community with actionable, cutting edge job search techniques alongside personalized guidance to help you get unstuck and moving forward into your next opportunity in the new year. Keep an eye on my socials for more details soon.

I also plan speak at HR conferences in Hong Kong and Singapore. I’ve joined many of these conferences in the past as a panelist and emcee. But I’ve never given a keynote address. First time for everything! My focus will be a bit different than what you normally hear at these HR conferences. Instead of talking about introducing AI in HR, adopting skills frameworks or managing hybrid work, I’ll be talking about YOU – the HR leader.  No one ever seems to care about you, but I do. If you have an HR conference to recommend to me, please drop me a DM. In addition to conferences, I’ll also be looking for opportunities to be a guest on HR-focused podcasts. I’m excited to spread the word about the challenges and opportunities for HR leaders and how and why so many of us feel stuck and what we can do about it.

Finally, I look forward to kicking off my work with Hatwell Group as an Executive Coach and Trainer. Hatwell develops talent in finance through group workshops and 1:1 executive coaching. We work with the top names in financial services to build toolkits for management and leadership, centered around the fundamental skill of communication. I look forward to travelling around the region and meeting our clients. If you’d like to learn more about Hatwell, please DM me.

So that’s my 2024 and a sneak peek at my plans for 2025. I usually don’t share so much personal detail in these newsletters, but the end of a year and the start of a new one felt like the right time to do so. Hopefully, this has encouraged  you to do the same. To kick off your own reflection, here is a link to my 2024 reflection worksheet and 2025 planner. Do it now before time gets away from you. If nothing else, you will have a record of how 2024 went for you and a start of an idea for your plans for 2025. There is never a better time than right now. Happy new year and look forward to connecting in 2025!

I work with female senior leaders in Human Resources who feel stuck to help them love their work or find work they love. Like this newsletter? Please sign-up, share + follow me if you found this interesting. I write about:

👂 Executive & career coaching

📄 Career development and career transition

🎯 Job search strategy

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