Dea Libertas: Angela Chan and the Freedom to Build Differently

Angela Chan spent nearly two decades in some of the most powerful financial institutions in the world: HSBC, HKEX, the London Metal Exchange, Bank of America. She was fast, decisive, and relentlessly accountable. Inside a system that rewarded slowness and caution, those qualities made her uncomfortable to have around. They also made her exactly the kind of advisor a growing business needs.

Today she runs two businesses simultaneously. Libertas Advisory is a fractional COO practice built on operational speed and radical accountability. Freedom2Sparkle is a bespoke jewelry and heirloom remodeling business built on the belief that value only exists when it has meaning. Both are expressions of the same conviction: that the traits that make someone disruptive inside a large institution are precisely the traits that make them exceptional outside one.

In this exclusive GER conversation, Angela speaks with characteristic directness about redundancy, relief, the PowerPoint decks nobody reads, and why she has never worked harder or felt more like herself.

The Journey: Career, Identity and Life

You built a career spanning HSBC, HKEX, the London Metal Exchange, and Bank of America before becoming an entrepreneur. Looking back, what moments or experiences shaped the person and leader you are today?

Working in global institutions gave me an invaluable international perspective that I am deeply grateful for. Looking back, my most defining leadership lessons came from watching missed opportunities: moments where the bold, the fast, and the courageous should have taken action.

In global institutions, the structural design is naturally risk-averse. I frequently watched impactful initiatives stall because decision-making was too slow, maintaining the status quo was safer, and managing upwards took precedence over operational execution. That realization became the blueprint for Libertas Advisory. Growing businesses don’t just need high-level strategy; they need an independent partner who is fast, agile, and fiercely accountable.

Coming from a background in History and Politics before entering finance, and later completing a Master’s in History, what drew you toward the world of business and financial services, and has that background shaped how you read business or human motivation?

A background in history and politics teaches you how human beings behave when power, resources, and survival are on the line. Moving into financial services was a practical choice: I wanted to be in a high-performance environment where the commercial rewards matched the effort.

That historical angle directly shapes how I read business today. Markets and industries change, but human nature remains identical. What matters is not the sector you are in, but the real intentions behind every decision, the leverage at play, and the ultimate price a leader is willing to accept.

Was there a defining moment early in your career that changed the way you viewed success?

Early in my career, my definition of success was incredibly straightforward: climb the corporate ladder as fast as possible and make Managing Director by a certain age. I was entirely focused on the titles, the prestige, and keeping up with the machine.

The turning point was completely accidental. I spent two weeks on an environmental project in a remote part of China. We were entirely cut off: no phones, no internet, no newspapers, no television, no corporate hierarchy. The daily routine was dead simple: get up, go out into the forest, measure trees, eat a basic dinner, and go to sleep. And I was happy. That two-week reset taught me that true success is not about chasing a milestone title to validate yourself within an institutional hierarchy. It is about clarity and focusing on what is actually real. Happiness can be very simple, and to be successful is to be happy in your own skin.

You spent nearly 20 years across HSBC, HKEX, the London Metal Exchange, and Bank of America before founding Dea Libertas. What was the moment you knew it was time to build something of your own?

The standard founder narrative is a romantic lightbulb moment. The reality was much more pragmatic. After nearly two decades in banking, I faced a redundancy. In today’s market, despite a proven track record, reaching a certain stage in your career can make you almost invisible, or worse, the ecosystem expects you to take a junior title just to stay in the room. I was too proud to do that, and I knew myself too well to try.

That was the exact moment I built Dea Libertas. I realized the traits that can make someone disruptive in corporate bureaucracy, assertiveness, zero tolerance for mediocrity, and a relentless focus on solving root problems, are the exact assets that make an exceptional advisor. I did not start a business out of a romantic dream; I started it because I wanted to be paid by clients who actually want to get things done.

After nearly two decades in established institutions, what emotions came with leaving a successful corporate career to start something of your own?

I am of course grateful for my time in corporate finance. However, the overriding emotion was a sense of profound relief.

Some people thrive in that environment. Others have their ambitions and ideas walled in, especially those free-spirited, talented people. For me, leaving did not feel like a hesitant step into the unknown; it felt like walking out of confinement. Like I can breathe again.

For the first time in my career, I own my voice and my time. I create my own environment and the principles I work within. I set my own perimeter. That freedom is not just a personal victory; it is the core asset I bring to my business. What clients are hiring is a person who is open and ready to listen, to roll up the sleeves and get the hands dirty, tell the truth, and deliver raw results with integrity.

What parts of your previous corporate identity did you have to let go of, and what parts did you carry forward?

I let go of the corporate badges, the titles, and the performative culture. Beyond that, I carried my entire self forward.

Throughout twenty years in corporate finance, I maintained a strict line between acquiring technical infrastructure knowledge and indulging in office politics. Having a backbone certainly cost me promotions along the way, but my principles, assertiveness, analytical capability, and an insistence on competence over corporate optics, never wavered. The technical expertise, the complex systems knowledge, and the battle scars are the raw power I bring to my clients today. The corporate identity itself was never truly mine to begin with.

Was there a specific client, deal, or experience in your banking career that planted the seed for Libertas Advisory?

The real seed was planted when I realized how much more I could deliver if I was not constantly shrinking myself or dimming my pace to keep others comfortable. The exact traits that make a high performer uncomfortable inside a bank, speed, decisiveness, and radical accountability, are the exact assets clients hire an independent advisor for.

When you reflect on your younger self at the beginning of your career, what advice would you give her?

I would tell her what everyone says: stay open, say yes to hard challenges, and always choose the right path over the easy one. But with hindsight, I would add: learn the trade, master the mechanics, and get out sooner.

Treat global institutions as an elite training ground. Absorb the complex systems knowledge and build your competence, but do not buy into the illusion of the corporate ladder, and do not spend decades shining someone else’s brand. Extract the expertise fast, recognize your worth early, and build your own vehicle before the machine burns you out.

The Business: Libertas Advisory

You describe yourself as an “objective partner” to business owners in transition. What does that objectivity look like in practice when a founder is emotionally attached to their company?

At the beginning, you are patient, hold the founder’s hand, and move through the transition step by step. That sounds nice, but very often the truth is that by the time a business owner actually reaches out to an advisor, time is already running out.

When you are emotionally attached to a company you built, you lose your peripheral vision. You naturally blind yourself to the flaws because facing them hurts. Objectivity in practice starts with gentle coaching; at the same time, you need to shine a spotlight on the one thing the founder is desperately trying to avoid, which is almost always the most painful, most broken, and most urgent issue to fix.

True objectivity means having the courage to look at a chaotic situation, skip the pleasantries, and force the critical, uncomfortable decisions that need to happen today, not next quarter.

Hong Kong is positioned as a launchpad for cross-border expansion. What is the biggest misconception founders have about going global from here?

The biggest misconception is the delusion that you can go global quickly, cheaply, and by cutting corners.

Founders get spoilt by Hong Kong’s hyper-efficiency, where everything moves at lightning speed, and they assume the rest of the world operates the same way. It does not. The moment you cross borders, you hit real issues: complex regulations, entirely different consumer behaviours, and high operational costs.

Trying to scale internationally on a shoestring budget with shortcut compliance is the fastest way to kill a business. Global expansion is expensive, slow, and unforgiving. If you are not willing to pay the full price to do it right, you should not be doing it at all.

Walk us through a time you helped a business restructure for efficiency. What almost went wrong?

My approach to restructuring was actually forged by being on the receiving end of terrible consulting.

Early in my career, a London-based consultant called a regional meeting to dictate a massive new system rollout, using APAC as the guinea pig. His opening line was: “I am not here to convince you to do this; I am here to tell you to do it.” I closed my laptop and ended the meeting immediately.

Dictatorial, top-down approaches ignore ground realities and trigger massive organizational inertia. That experience completely shaped how I restructure businesses today: you cannot drive operational efficiency without respecting and empowering the teams who actually have to run the system.

What is a red flag you watch for when a founder says they are “ready to scale”?

Saying you are ready to scale is a beautifully ambitious sentiment, but growth eats capital. The biggest red flag is a founder who has a massive global vision but zero real resources to back it up.

Scaling is not an organic, magical next step; it is a heavy, resource-intensive acceleration. If you do not have the platform, the capital, the talent, or the concrete funding to sustain the expansion before it turns a profit, you are not ready to scale.

I look at the balance sheet. If the numbers are not there to fuel the machine, the strategy is just a daydream.

The Business: Freedom2Sparkle

Bespoke jewelry and heirloom remodeling both involve turning something old into something new. How does that inform how you think about value more broadly?

It only has value when it has meaning. And it is the same for businesses and jewelry.

A heavy piece of gold sitting forgotten in a safety deposit box is materially expensive, but practically worthless if it serves no purpose in your life. The value only unlocks when it is reshaped into something you actually wear and connect with.

A company can generate impressive numbers, but if the structure no longer aligns with the owner’s actual purpose or vision for their life, the asset is stagnant. True value is not just about what something is worth on paper; it is about whether it actually serves a meaningful purpose for the person who built it.

High-net-worth clients trust you with both their balance sheets and their heirlooms. Is there a common thread in what they are really looking for?

What they are actually looking for is a trusted partner who thoroughly understands their thinking and core purpose.

Whether dealing with a balance sheet or a family heirloom, they do not want a passive gatekeeper who just maintains the status quo. They want an advisor who aligns with their intent and has the capability to take their vision and build it further and bigger.

Leadership & Decision-Making

Moving from a large institution to founder-led entrepreneurship changes how decisions get made. What is the hardest adjustment you have had to make?

The actual reality is simple: the hardest adjustment is losing a stable income.

When you work for someone else, you get completely conditioned to a guaranteed monthly paycheck. The money just shows up.

When you step out on your own, that baseline predictability vanishes overnight. Every single dollar depends entirely on your own execution. It is a massive psychological shift that forces you to drop any lingering complacency immediately.

Your background is in operations, HR transformation, and business management roles, not classic deal-making. How has that shaped your style as an advisor?

Classic deal-makers focus on the transaction: they get the signature, take their percentage, and leave before the ink is dry. They do not have to live with the fallout.

Because my background is in operations and HR transformation, I look at business transitions completely differently. I know exactly how easy it is to draw a beautiful strategy on a whiteboard, and how incredibly hard it is to make it work in reality.

My style as an advisor is shaped by one simple rule: make it happen. I focus on execution, accountability, and the actual mechanics of how the team functions, because a deal is only successful if the business survives the integration.

What is a piece of advice from your banking years that you have had to actively unlearn?

In banking, you are trained to believe people actually care about your PowerPoint decks.

The reality is that no one does. Busy clients want the bottom line. If you cannot explain the strategy in three direct sentences, a slide deck is not going to save you.

Reflection & Outlook

Four months into Dea Libertas, what has surprised you most about entrepreneurship?

How liberating it feels, even though it is pretty damn hard.

When you leave a corporate job, the safety net is completely gone and everything lands squarely on your shoulders. The pressure is real and the learning curve is steep.

But the sheer freedom to make your own decisions, move at your own pace, and execute with zero office politics outweighs the struggle entirely. It turns out that doing the hard work for yourself is a million times better than doing the comfortable work for someone else.

What does success look like for Libertas Advisory and Freedom2Sparkle in five years, separately and together?

Dea Libertas literally means Goddess of Freedom in Latin, the ancient symbol that inspired the Statue of Liberty. My two businesses are designed to lock that freedom in from both sides.

For Libertas Advisory, success means securing two to three long-term fractional COO roles: jumping in to fix operational chaos for a founder, and staying on to maintain high-margin growth. For Freedom2Sparkle, it means establishing a dedicated brand agent network to handle international sales and distribution, leaving me free to focus entirely on strategy and high-end design.

Together, they form a self-sustaining ecosystem: one provides high-level strategic leverage, while the other provides creative output and tangible assets.

What is one piece of advice you would give another executive leaving a large institution to start something of their own?

If you are leaving a large institution to start your own thing, know that this is not for the faint-hearted.

You think you know hard work from your corporate years, but entrepreneurship is a completely different beast. It is always on your mind. There is no Monday-to-Friday boundary, and there is no resting on the weekend. I have never worked as much or as hard in my life as I am right now.

But despite the absolute madness, I am so glad I made the decision to step out. For the first time in years, I am myself again, always. The workload is heavy, but at least the results belong to me.

The workload is heavy, but at least the results belong to me.

Editor’s closing note

Angela Chan is not a person who softens her edges for the room. Twenty years in institutions that rewarded softness, and she never acquired the habit. What she acquired instead was something rarer: a precise, unsentimental understanding of how organizations actually work, and an equally clear understanding of what they cost the people who are too good for them.

The name Dea Libertas is not branding. It is a declaration. A woman who spent two decades being fast in slow institutions has finally built an environment where speed is the whole point. The results, she tells us, belong to her now. Watching what she does with them will be worth following.

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For another inspiring story on purpose-driven leadership, don’t miss our earlier feature: The Currency of Trust: Cédric Stadelmann on family offices, legacy, and building wealth that lasts for generations