In Conversation With YWLC Ep 1: Leadership Development - Building Social Capital with Huijia Phua

Introducing Series #3 of “In Conversation with YWLC”! Calling all aspiring young women leaders, this podcast is your perfect guide to strive and thrive in the workplace and beyond. In this Series #3 of In Conversation with YWLC, Leadership Development brings you conversations built around our Leadership Competency Framework: Leading Self, Leading Others, and Leading with Impact. Across this series, we speak with women who bring lived experience and hard-won insight to each pillar, offering practical wisdom for navigating the different dimensions of leadership. This episode sits within Leading Others, where we dive into a topic that doesn't get nearly enough airtime: social capital. In this episode, we explore what it really means to build social capital, from earning trust and understanding how others perceive us, to growing influence across different spheres and industries. Our guest, Huijia Phua, Founder of Skillseed, shares how she has built trust among the people she works with, so that others are willing to follow her lead, and how her involvement across different organisations and volunteer work has shaped the breadth of her influence. Drawing from her experience in social innovation and community engagement, Huijia offers grounded insight into what it means to build genuine relationships and lead with credibility. Huijia Phua is the founder of Skillseed, a social enterprise driving social, community, and environmental impact, and the 2019 recipient of the Eco Star of Asia Award. She designs leadership, community engagement, and social innovation programmes for public officers, community guides, volunteers, and corporates, drawing on her own Tamarind Tree of Trust™ framework to explore mindsets, emotional awareness, collaborative power, and spheres of influence. She also partners with community guides on Resilience Trails that create opportunities for the community. I find her to be deeply reflective, authentic, and purpose driven. This conversation, hosted by Pei Rong Cheo, a YWLC Leadership Development Subcommittee member, is part of In Conversation with YWLC, a podcast series by the Young Women’s Leadership Connection. In Conversation with YWLC Mini-series #3: Leadership Development