A chat with Cartier Women’s Initiative 2023 Fellow Mint Lim on expanding her award-winning and inclusive brand of education to Malaysia
“Please don’t be offended... I’m not looking into your eyes directly but actually concentrating on your eyebrows as we’re talking,” Mint Lim says candidly, adding that she has dyslexia and that people with learning differences often have unique challenges to overcome when it comes to learning and interacting. “It’s sometimes hard for me to handle that emotional presence, because in my mind I’m going part by part on this formula in my head while speaking, otherwise I might sound incoherent,” she says with a winsome grin.
Lim is the founder of the School of Concepts, an educational institution in Singapore that teaches English and Chinese literacy as well as STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) proficiency through an innovative visual/auditory/kinesthetic learning methodology. Rethinking how different children learn and encouraging their unique optimal learning style, the School of Concepts lives its mission to leave no child behind.
Read more: Cartier Women’s Initiative 2023: Meet the fellows from across Asia
“In school, I didn’t understand what was going on,” Lim recalls. “I started thinking that the people around me are very smart, and so I must be either really dumb or really slow. When exams kicked in my low scores didn’t help.
“Thankfully, my parents never believed that I was less than anyone else. My dad once told me, ‘It’s ok if people take one year to do something that takes you five years to do. You will still get there’,” she says. “That built grit in me. That’s why I am here today. I learnt to realise that it doesn’t matter. We can still get to that end-goal.”
Lim’s inspiring outlook and work ethic have earned her both local and international acclaim. Last year, she was honoured as a Cartier Women’s Initiative 2023 Fellow—the first impact entrepreneur from Singapore to be inducted to the Cartier Women’s Initiative, an annual international entrepreneurship programme empowering women-run and women-owned businesses around the world that have a strong social and/or environmental impact.
See also: Women advancing women: Meet the Front & Female Awards Malaysia 2024 winners
“How does it feel being a Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow? Quite surreal to be honest,” Lim says. “We always associate luxury brands solely with making profits. But to have one’s impact in society recognised in this way is like a fairytale.”
She adds: “Being a Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow has enabled me to put impact and sustainability on a global stage, which is so important in economies like ours where finding that sweet spot of being sustainable as a business can be quite trying.”
