About Eva

Some changes in life are not about changing jobs or moving somewhere new. They are about no longer continuing in the same direction.

In 1989, I made the first major change in the direction of my life. After that, I began to take a question more seriously—one that has never had a simple answer:

How should we live, if we are to do justice to this life?

A few years later, that question began to take shape in action.

In 1994, we held the first Heart Chorus program at a school in Hong Kong. The following year, it travelled to Hunan, China. At the time, none of us knew how far it would go. It was simply a group of people coming together, doing something together, and discovering what could happen when people related to one another differently.

Over the years, Heart Chorus moved from schools to universities, and from Hong Kong to other parts of the world. In 2015, Heart Chorus Association International (HCAI) was incorporated in Canada, giving a new home to work that had already been going on for more than two decades.

In 1995, Lawrence Leung and I began developing our own approach to coaching. We coined the Chinese term 「教練技術」 for this work, and through years of practice and research, it gradually developed into the REN Coaching Model.

REN was later widely used in business, education and coach training in China. Over the years, we trained many coaches, trainers and managers, while continuing to develop and teach the model ourselves.

At the same time, I remained involved in and supportive of the coaching community in Asia and internationally. In 2004, Lawrence Leung and I became the first two ICF Master Certified Coaches (MCCs) in China, both receiving the credential on October 29, 2004. I later served on ICF’s global board.

In 2006, TopHuman received the ICF President’s Award. REN also became part of international coaching research, publications and professional exchange, and The Power of REN: China’s Coaching Phenomenon became part of ICF’s research collection.

From the Archive

Eva Wong — ICF Master Certified Coach, 2004

Lawrence Leung — ICF Master Certified Coach, 2004

TopHuman — ICF President’s Award, 2006

For me, coaching has never been only a professional methodology. It is also a way of living.

More than two decades later, I made another equally fundamental choice.

In 2020, I stepped away from commercial work and turned my time and energy fully toward work for the public good.

It was not a rejection of what had come before. Quite the opposite. After travelling a long road, I had become clearer about why I had started in the first place.

I did not feel the need to replace one identity with another. Teaching, public-interest work, writing, travel, learning and cooking still sit side by side in my life. At this stage, I simply prefer to give my time to the things I genuinely want to do.

These days, I think of time as a countdown.

Not because I am finished. Quite the opposite. There is still a great deal I want to do.

I am simply clearer now that not everything needs to continue, and not every opportunity needs to be taken.

I still write. I still learn. I still do the work I care about.

I am not interested in wrapping this life up in a neat conclusion.

As long as there is something I still want to do, I will keep doing it.