Yolanda Sing is a coach, writer, consultant, equine facilitator and an entrepreneur. She founded Chloe Consultant to help people take charge of their lives, to find their purpose, and to draw upon their own gifts and talents, to become their authentic selves.
She runs experiential-learning programmes to teach leadership and emotional intelligence using horses. Prior to starting up, Sing worked in various Human Resource roles across various continents – Africa, the Middle East, Europe, China, Australia and the USA.
In 2007 when she was working in Singapore, her life took an abrupt turn when she was diagnosed with malignant brain tumor.
“ I had lived a very simple life and I regarded myself a health fanatic with a regular daily exercise routine. This should not happen to me. It was as if I was having a horrible dream in which I was drowning. In the background, I could hear Jeff, my husband, and the doctor having a conversation about a brain operation and the different types of radiation treatments that were available to me. It was a clinical, matter-of-fact discussion, as if I was not even in the room.”
“When I managed to catch my breath, I heard myself asking the question, “How long do I have to live?” “You have a long life ahead of you!” I felt as though a lifeboat had just rescued me and that a second chance had been given to me, because I knew until then, I had only been living my life. I had not been true to my soul’s purpose,” recounts Yolanda.
In her quest to overcome the illness and live an abundant, successful, purposeful and healthy life, she made a choice to ‘hear and listen’ to the voices of hope. She fought and went through intensive radiation and chemotherapy treatments and finally, braved cancer.
Yolanda then left the job and returned to her home country, South Africa. She realized that the illness had a message – not just for her but for the many others in our world, also suffering with illness or caught up in careers that are demanding, stressful or no longer inspirational. This inspired her to start Chloe Consultants in 2008 to help people take charge of their lives and find their purpose. Since then, she has personally ran programmes in various centres around the country: Maclear, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth as well as outside South Africa: United Kingdom, Dubai, India and Kenya.
She has delivered training programmes for organisations such as Coca-Cola, Audi, Oracle, Naspers, PwC to name a few.
To share her journey of healing and transformation, she wrote a book – Power in the Paddock. It is an inspiring account by Yolanda and her favourite polo pony, Erika. It is her response to the many questions she asked herself during her illness and her healing period of seven years, and it chronicles the extraordinary journey that sees her heal from cancer and take the leap to follow her greatest dream of living and working full time with beloved equine creatures. She shares her experiences and invites all of us to embrace healing as a natural part of Life.
“It took me many years to have the courage to write this book. Part of my reluctance was fear that people would look at me differently and treat me differently, if they knew that I was a brain tumor survivor. Part of it was fear that my words would not be powerful and that nobody would read my book. But mostly, it was the pain of remembering. I am not sure where the turning point was that liberated me to have the courage to tell the story, but here I am. If my story inspires just one person, it was worth the risk,” hopes Yolanda.
