By day, Ms Jody Ang, aged 27-years old, pursues a double degree in business management and social sciences at SMU and is part of the University's Lee Kong Chian Scholars Programme. Ms Ang took four gap years between sitting her A levels at St Andrew's Junior College in 2008 and enrolling in SMU in 2013, doing a range of jobs. But when she is not in class, she is running two businesses that she started, both set up at different points when she took time off from the conventional academic route.
When Ms Ang was 21 years old in 2011, in the third of her four gap years, she set up bakery Grin Affair, which served its desserts in jars. Her first business venture is still ongoing and has a second outlet now, although she has left the day-to-day operations to the second of her two older brothers. Last year, during a semester's leave of absence from SMU, she started her second business, which supplies healthy snacks to other businesses under the brand Folks and Stories.