The Power of Stories

A beautiful moment at EcosySTEM Asia Summit for Leaders in STEM

Rochelle Silva
2 min readMay 28, 2023
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

“When were you proudest of yourself? Why?”
This was a question I answered during a paired introduction activity at the workshop on “Power of Storytelling” conducted by Chuen Chuen Yeo 杨荃荃.

I shared with my team the struggles I endured during my PhD, changing the trajectory, and still submitting on time.

When the time for the paired introduction came, my colleague shared the introduction he had written for me. He shared how he thought I had a smooth PhD journey, but my story today inspired him to be brave in the face of change. It was an emotional moment. Some of us cried. It was a beautiful moment when he shared the introduction with nearly 150 audience members.

So grateful for beautiful moments like this and many more at the “EcosySTEM Asia Summit for Leaders in STEM: Empowering women with The Elsevier Foundation.”

Brene Brown⁠⁠ said, “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” I learned about the power of our stories and how we must be tactful to “Share the scars, and not the bleeding wounds.”

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Rochelle Silva

PhD grad from NTU 🇸🇬| Logophile | Artist | Coffee Lover | Sri Lankan | https://linktr.ee/rochellesilva | Buy me a ☕https://bit.ly/399XKRX