Expert communicator and holistic education thought leader with 16 years of experience in holistic education, entrepreneurship and finance. Crystal Lim-Lange* is a holistic education expert and mindset change agent. She is the founder of mindset change agency Forest Wolf, and previously the Director at the National University of Singapore (NUS)’s Centre for Future-ready Graduates.
Crystal is best known for pioneering “Roots & Wings” at NUS, a groundbreaking large-scale mindfulness and social emotional intelligence program which prepares youth for a rapidly changing world through teaching essential skills such as self-awareness, mindfulness, empathy and resilience.
Crystal calls her life journey “from Mercenary to Missionary”. Her career started off in the frenetic world of investment banking and equities trading, and then a mid-life existential crisis prompted her to move from cosmopolitan Singapore to a vineyard in rural Australia, where she started Legacy Retreat, offering holistic personal growth retreats for senior leaders.
Though running retreats was deeply fulfilling, Crystal always longed to scale her work and shift mass consciousness. One day, while meditating on a mountain in Bhutan, one of Crystal’s retreat clients suggested that she bring her personal transformation work to a younger audience, and connected her with the National University of Singapore, who happened to be looking for a change agent to future-proof its youth. Suddenly, she found herself educating thousands of millennials, expanding into educator and corporate programmes.
Roots & Wings has changed the lives of over 10,000 students so far and NUS is the first university in the world to offer a future-ready skills program as an essential part of the educational journey.
Prior to this, Crystal was the Founding Director of innovative holistic education startup Legacy Retreat, recognised as a global pioneer in personal development and coaching. A powerful motivational public speaker on learning and self development topics, she speaks regularly at conferences and forums.
Crystal is also enthusiastic about philanthropy with experience raising funds for a wide variety of causes ranging from autism, Alzheimers, hospice care and the arts. In 2012, she was a sponsor for non-profit organisation Smiling Mind Australia, which teaches mindfulness to young people and has had its curriculum adopted in 5,000 schools and institutions across Australia.
Crystal is passionate about unlocking human potential and believes that our collective future depends on the evolution of our consciousness. She blogs at www.thecrystalstream.com and her upcoming book, Mindsets & Meaning is a manual for the hardware-savvy but heartware-dumb generation, and delves into the essential mindsets we need to thrive and find meaning in a VUCA world.