The Most Critical Issues Of This Decade

Three of our Next-Gen alumni – Anna Haotanto, John Cheng and Ng Yi-Xian – suggest issues they are passionate about. Find out what they think are the most critical issues of this decade.

- Anna Haotanto, John Cheng and Ng Yi-Xian

REMEMBER YOUR DEATH

Covid-19 helped Next Gen alumni Anna Haotanto take a fresh look at her life’s purpose and made her realise there are more dimensions to wellness than physical and mental health.

Have you ever wondered about whether you’re living or dying? Managing partner and COO of ABZD Capital, Anna Vanessa Haotanto, and former CEO of Emergenetics International, Terence Quek, have been haunted by this question for years, but it only came to the surface at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

“On the surface, everything seemed fine to me. The business was doing fine, and I had friends and family around, but I didn’t feel great,” Haotanto recalls. She wasn’t alone.

The phenomenon was so common that it was given a name: languishing. It feels as if you’re muddled through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield, as Adam Grant wrote in a New York Times article.

Haotanto did something about it, and found a kindred spirit in Quek, who had been thinking hard about how to maximise the life he’d been blessed with. Together, they discovered the concept of healthspan, which isn’t just about how long you live, but how well you do it.

“The primary question is: how should you live your life?” Quek says. The former Navy officer was all about making a positive impact in other people’s lives through volunteerism, education, and economic empowerment activities.

This year, he once ran 225km in 20 days, bought a bicycle, and even built a hydroponics farm at home.