Flowers In The Boardroom - How Women Lead When They Own The Room /by Vivian Yap

• author: Vivian Yap

• publisher: YSQ Consultancy

• published in: 2026

• language: English

Flowers in the Boardroom is eleven real stories of women across Malaysia and Asia who stopped editing who they were and discovered that the qualities they had been asked to dial down were the ones that made them exceptional leaders.

No composites. No fictional case studies. Eleven named women. Real decisions, real stakes. All named and present transitioning into and navigating senior leadership, the C-suite, and the boardroom. Women who held the line when it cost them. Women who built influence without force. Women who had to learn -sometimes the hard way- to trust themselves as much as their results trusted them. They were are the women who had to figure it out. And they did.

Organised around Four pillars: Competency - Integrity - Trust - Influence.

Each story is paired with a structured self-coaching reflection — the 3H Lens: Head (how you think), Heart (what you value), Hands (what you do next). They are not exercises. They are conversations between the leader you have become and the one you are still becoming. This book does not just inspire you. It puts the thinking tool in your hands.

About the author:

Vivian Yap is a leadership and executive coach with over 35 years of corporate experience. She has held senior leadership roles in the C-suite including Chief Marketing Office and Mall Director roles in the retail sector, leading teams and organisations through change, growth, and complexity.

Known for her ability to see possibility before others do — and to build the bridge that gets people there — Vivian now coaches senior executives and teams through leadership transitions, helping them lead from the full range of who they are rather than from a version of themselves shaped by other people's expectations.

She is also the eleventh woman in this book — writing from inside the same journey, not from the outside looking in.