‘I’ve given up a lot’: The woman who led Aware’s transformation

Corinna Lim reflects on power, burnout and why knowing when to leave matters as much as knowing when to fight.

- Wong Kim Hoh

Ms Corinna Lim leaves Aware with "no burning regrets". There are ideas she did not manage to execute - especially around men and boys - but nothing that keeps her awake at night, she says.

(ST PHOTO: GIN TAY)

On the surface, Ms Corinna Lim reads like a serial overachiever: top law student, former national squash player, tech entrepreneur who raised seven-figure funding, lawyer behind Singapore’s first domestic violence Bill, and the leader who grew Aware from a six-person outfit into a multimillion-dollar, 30-strong force for gender equality.

In person, she is less iron-lady feminist than wry, self-aware confessor who talks easily about fear, failure, burnout and the quiet toll of always having to be “on”.

Now 61, she grew up in an upper-middle-class family living off Holland Road, the middle of three daughters of parents who were both educated in England. Childhood schedules were relentless: music lessons, “five types of dance classes”, several instruments before sport decisively took over.

One afternoon, while their parents played tennis, she and her elder twin sister Serena picked up rackets and started hitting balls. By their teens, they were known as “the tennis twins”. Their rivalry was fierce enough that after one on-court clash left Ms Lim needing stitches, the sisters struck a truce.

“You take tennis, I’ll take squash,” recalls the former national squash player who believes competitive sports builds resilience and character in ways that last a lifetime.

But if sport gave her confidence, sexuality complicated her young adulthood.

Being a closeted gay woman in conservative Singapore in the 1980s and 1990s weighed heavily on her. Although professionally successful, she recalls being deeply unhappy and fantasising about emigrating to New Zealand, Canada or Australia.