Bridging the Gap: From Knowing to Doing in Decision-Making
The OTR Academy Club
There is no registration fee for this event. However, if you’d love to support our charitable initiatives, a suggested donation of $30 would be deeply appreciated. Donate here 💜
Every day, we make decisions without knowing how things will turn out. Whether it's a career move, a family matter, a career change, or a personal crossroads where uncertainty is often unavoidable. Yet many of us find ourselves stuck — waiting for more information, seeking the "right" answer or fearing the consequences of making the wrong choice.
Join us for an online, intimate fireside chat as we explore how to make confident decisions when certainty is out of reach. Through stories, practical insights, and shared experiences, while navigating life's complex choices.
Together, we'll discuss:
Why uncertainty makes decisions hard
What drives indecision
How to move forward despite uncertainty
Dieter Kahlmann
Dieter Kahlmann spent decades at the sharp end of financial decision-making — the kind where hesitation costs money and overconfidence costs more. His career took him from senior roles at Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank to five years on the Tokyo markets, and early on he co-founded BullBear System Trading, advising professional financial institutions on trading systems and risk management strategies. What runs through all of it is a question he has returned to again and again: how do people actually make good decisions— under pressure, with incomplete information, when the stakes are real? After banking, he spent more than fifteen years as an independent consultant and coach in Spain — building that practice online before remote consulting was normal. He is a former certified paragliding instructor, a Focusing practitioner, and now lives in the Canary Islands. Someone, in other words, who understands risk, reads inner signals, and knows when to take off, when to land, and where.
Yen-Lu Chow
A former Apple Distinguished Technologist, Yen-Lu is a visionary entrepreneur, award-winning technologist, venture catalyst & angel investor, mentor & advisor turned author & keynote speaker, mental wellbeing champion, social innovator & ecosystem builder, humanist and philanthropist.
As an expert and practitioner in speech recognition and language processing (with 6 international patents while leading Apple’s initiative in this area in the early 1990’s), he was an early pioneer in the application of AI with a strong base in the tech space.
As an angel investor and venture catalyst in the Singapore tech ecosystem, Yen-Lu has mentored entrepreneurs and businesses for many years. He has made significant contributions to the Singapore tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem, serving on countless startup business plan competitions internationally, government panels on innovation and entrepreneurship, and as mentor and advisor to the major universities. He co-founded a business angel fund in partnership with the Singapore government, served as a director of Business Angel Network SEA, executive mentor and adjunct professor to NUS Enterprise and mentor to INSEAD.
A champion of youth mental wellness and human wellbeing, he believes that every young person has a voice, an innate gift, a deeply held aspiration waiting to find creative fulfillment. When we nurture the seeds of these innate gifts with attention, acceptance, and love – by providing the right environment, and giving it purpose – these seeds sprout and grow, and the human spirit with its deepest aspirations finds fulfillment.
He sits at the nexus of three major social ecosystems: mental health, mentoring and sustainability, bringing extensive experience in tech and entrepreneurship to build ecosystems and mobilize communities to create positive social change. In a fast-paced world where the only constant is change, he believes there is an urgent need for each of us to draw on our strengths and creative potential as human beings to contribute towards humanity in a positive and impactful way. He enjoys building ecosystems and mobilizing the community to create positive social change. With the launch of his family foundation and other social impact initiatives, Yen-Lu devotes his time serving both society and the nation in his various capacities.
He is on a life mission to help bring about a kinder, gentler, more inclusive, more just and sustainable world.
About the OTR Academy Club
The OTR Academy Club is a branded community space of the OTR Academy where wellbeing practitioners, volunteers and the public can continue personal and professional growth with holistic wellbeing as the overarching theme — through ongoing events, peer support circles, and workshops. The structure is flexible, allowing for multiple thematic circles (e.g., for parents, teachers, career, decision-making, etc), and emphasizes shared learning, applications, and the development of practical wellbeing skills.
This is a space where a community is forged – together we co-create solutions and celebrate positive change, no matter how small. Each participant is responsible for their own learning through active participation and sharing: to explore solutions together and help each other deal with decision-making challenges in the digital age – supporting each other to better prepare ourselves to meet an increasingly uncertain New Future.
Our circles revolve around four main themes:
DEVELOP: Personal development through understanding ourselves — our strengths and blind spots — in order to continue growing with clarity and purpose.
CONNECT: Mastering the science and art of communicating with compassion so that we thrive in the relationships that matter.
LEAD: Level up leadership skill sets with focus on leading with purpose and connection in the age of AI.
BELONG: Bringing community and collaboration to the forefront by sharing access to a large network of professional mentors, social impact leaders, mental health practitioners and experts.
Our purpose is to inspire individuals in their personal and professional development journeys and foster deeper connections. Through deep sharing and guided reflections, attendees will learn how to thrive through stories, tools and strategies, as we work together and support each other as a community in our move towards a holistic transformation.