Coffee Talk with Siu Lie Tan — The Freedom to Do Things Differently
From telecom journalism to Tuscany — with a few unexpected turns
Years after we worked in the same small world of Dutch telecom journalism, I came across Siu Lie Tan again. Her name was now connected to Tuscany, circular innovation, European regulation and a natural cosmetics company. It was not the most predictable career update.
We first met during the years of Connexie, when operators, networks and the emerging internet filled the pages. Today, Tan works with Innoboost, founded Circular Symbiosis and is building IDUN Cosmetics from Italy. How did a telecom journalist end up there?
That seemed like a good reason for coffee — even if this particular conversation took place in writing and across borders.
What stayed from journalism?
The curiosity, for a start.
“Journalism taught me to hear beyond what is being said.”
Tan learned not only to record what people told her, but to notice what sat behind their words. Why was something presented in a particular way? Which assumptions were hiding underneath? And who benefited from the situation remaining as it was?
“When you start asking why, you see that the majority of things around you are constructs”, she says. “They’re not absolute truths.” That habit travelled with her after journalism. She continued asking questions, although the subjects changed.
A career shaped by curiosity
Publishing was followed by circularity, European regulation, entrepreneurship and cosmetics. Tan knows that the result does not resemble a conventional career ladder.
She prefers another image. “I can imagine that my career looks like a quilt blanket to a lot of people”, she says. “It is the reason why I’m an entrepreneur by necessity. HR people don’t seem to like the patchwork pattern.”
Tan, however, likes the quilt. “I believe we’re eclectic beings. I have never stopped myself from following the curiosity in another part of myself, even when this entailed seemingly starting from zero.”
What looks like a series of unrelated turns from the outside feels more natural from within. She followed what interested her and moved on when staying began to feel less logical than starting again.
Then came Tuscany
After twenty years in Amsterdam, Tan wanted a different environment. She had watched the city become more hurried, organised and demanding. Tuscany introduced another rhythm — and a rather different relationship with planning.
“Italy is so chaotic and unpredictable that it forces you to live in the moment”, she says. “Things don’t go as planned? Well, we’ll try again tomorrow. Let’s have aperitivo instead. Perfect.”
Lunch is still taken seriously. August has its own rules. And a carefully prepared schedule does not necessarily impress the person expected to follow it.
At first, that can be frustrating. But Tan discovered that the world rarely collapses when something has to wait until tomorrow. Improvisation can produce results that no one thought to plan.
“Life cannot be conceptualised from A to Z. There are too many variables changing its course.” Tuscany did not make her less ambitious. It made her less interested in controlling every step along the way.
From a personal problem to IDUN
The change of direction also had a more personal side. For years, Tan had focused on meeting the needs of the people around her while paying too little attention to her own. Eventually, the pressure began affecting her health and skin.
Her turning point was surprisingly simple:
“I don’t have to prove I can tolerate more. I can just walk away.”
As she recovered, Tan began developing cosmetic formulas for her own troubled skin. She later shared them with friends, whose experiences encouraged her to bring the products to market through IDUN Cosmetics.
The company did not emerge from a carefully prepared career strategy. It began with a practical problem, experimentation and the discovery that something made for herself could also help others feel more confident. Another square had found its place in the quilt.
Europe from the other side of the rules
Through Circular Symbiosis and her work with Innoboost, Tan helps businesses understand European sustainability regulation. She broadly supports the direction Europe is taking, but IDUN has also shown her what regulation looks like from a small founder’s desk.
In a large company, compliance has a department. In a small company, it becomes another task for the person already handling products, finance, marketing and sales.
“You need liquidity to create new products, partnerships and economic ecosystems,” she says. “You can’t do that in survival mode.”
Her point is not that Europe should lower its ambitions. Smaller companies simply need clearer information, practical guidance and enough time to adapt. A rule that appears perfectly logical from Brussels can feel rather different to an entrepreneur trying to launch a product from Tuscany.
That, perhaps, is what connects Tan’s different worlds. Journalism taught her to question the accepted story. Italy taught her that not everything needs to follow the plan. IDUN allowed her to turn personal experience into something tangible.
She once tried to fit herself into the environment around her. Today, she asks a different question:
“Does my environment fit me?”
It is not a bad question for people, companies — or Europe. And if the answer takes a little longer than expected? There is always tomorrow. And perhaps aperitivo first.
Coffee Talk with… is an Altair Media series of personal conversations with people whose experiences, ideas and choices reveal something about the systems shaping European society.
This written conversation has been edited for clarity and narrative flow.
Image credit
Watercolour illustration: Altair Media, generated with AI using a portrait of Siu Lie Tan as reference.
Caption
Siu Lie Tan in Tuscany, where a different rhythm—and the occasional aperitivo—changed how she thinks about work, entrepreneurship and the freedom to take an unexpected direction.
