“I used to have bigger blocks of time to do things outside work,” Lim says. “I love learning new things so I used to do at least one long trip every year to attend a retreat or a course, mostly related to yoga or holistic health. I am also an angel investor so I spend time meeting the start-ups I’m involved in.”

Lim’s interest in business only began after college. During her time there, she was involved in the arts and sports, and for reasons that remain a mystery to her, Lim found herself on an unplanned business career. “In the first decade of my working life, I pretty much just focused on climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak.”

After strenuous years in corporate, Lim took a couple of well-deserved career breaks and got into yoga, Eastern philosophy and energy medicine. “Serendipitously, when I was just about to retire from corporate life, I joined Hanson Robotics and had an unexpected opportunity to be involved in the arts again, as one of Sophia’s character writers and her first amateur photographer.”

‘Sophia’ is a Hanson Robotics creation. A human-like robot, described as “a personification of our dreams for the future of AI”, with the ability to display a wide range of complex and emotional expression, ‘Sophia’ was granted honorary citizenship by Saudi Arabia in 2017.

The CEO says she doesn’t have a family in the traditional sense of the word, but that does not detract from the quality of life she enjoys. “I don’t have children or a traditional family per se. Relatives and friends often find it strange that I have made this life choice but I really relish the mental and physical freedom,” she says.

Because time is limited, prioritising means giving up certain things, Lim says. Following the adage “You can have anything you want in life but you can’t have everything you want”, tied in with time being limited, means you have to give up things to get what you really desire.

“My guiding principles in life are ‘Do to others what you would do to yourself’, and ‘There is no right way to do the wrong thing, and there is no wrong way to do the right thing’,” says Lim. “I can only follow these principles if I associate with the right things and people, so I won’t find myself in a position where I’m forced to do the wrong thing, then try to make it feel right. That to me is always the wrong path to take.”

Jeanne Lim’s preferred watch

“I bought this at Harrods on a whim a few years ago. I was on a shopping spree in London with my best friend and we felt like buying something for each other – just to celebrate our friendship of over 20 years. So we bought the same Rolex with different coloured watch faces.”

Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter .