Former radio personality turned jeweller Maddy Barber was brought up in a traditional church.

She loved singing hymns in Sunday School and served in the choir. At the mission school that she went to, she aced its Bible Knowledge classes easily.

“We learnt and memorised things, but I didn’t understand much of it. I didn’t know why did Jesus have to come to set us free? Why did He need to forgive our sins? What did we need to repent from?” said Maddy, now 52.

But she thought that was “all there is to faith” – until she went through a divorce in her early 20s.

She learnt that if she wished to remarry, she could no longer get married in church. The experience left her feeling exiled and cut off from the community she grew up in.

“I continued going to church, but I was slowly disengaging from it out of anger and rebellion. It’s like I used to be the favoured child, but now I no longer knew where I stood in the family,” she recalled.

“Being a fool, I cut the nose to spite the face. Jesus became collateral damage,” said Maddy, who walked away from the church and kept her distance from God over the next decade.

She had such a deep-seated anger towards God that all her friends in the faith knew it was wiser not to make any mention of “Jesus” in front of her.

Prior to her divorce, Maddy had been working as a radio presenter and producer with the Perfect 10 show on 987FM. Radio was the first job she landed after graduating from school.

Moving overseas for work

After her divorce, Maddy moved to India for two years where she became a radio software consultant who helped to set up numerous radio stations in the country.

Thereafter, she moved to Thailand and became a programme director with Virgin Radio there. During her time in Thailand she met and married Britisher Wez Barber.

Her mother and friends would visit her often.

“They didn’t shove their faith down my throat. They continued praying for me even though I was far from God,” said Maddy.

Maddy married Yorkshireman Wez Barber. whom she met in Thailand.

Maddy became instrumental in helping the radio station rise up and become the top contemporary hit radio station in Bangkok, Thailand.

However, she was drawing a local salary of just over S$3,000 a month instead of an expat pay package. 

As their salaries could barely cover their rent and their two children’s international school fees, Maddy decided to ask her boss for a pay raise.

“My request was declined, though they were really supportive of me and the work that I did,” she recalled.

Maddy working with Virgin Radio in Bangkok.

The family had no choice but to move into another house where rent was significantly cheaper.

In that neighbourhood, Maddy noticed many empty houses which were sitting around for months or years without being successfully leased out.

First foray as a property agent 

A bright idea hit her. Since she loved building websites for fun, why not try listing and marketing those empty houses in return for a month’s commission?

With the encouragement of her husband, Maddy began calling up the numbers listed on the signboards outside the houses and offered her services.

Soon, she found herself pocketing a few hundred dollars extra a month from this side gig.

“I began to see light at the end of the tunnel for us – perhaps our family could have a better life now,” she told Salt&Light.

The cheaper housing estate that the Barbers moved to in Thailand.

She began showing homes to mainly expat clients in the weekends. On weekdays after work, she would be busy doing up the housing listings on her website.

“Clients were drawn to my listings because they loved my photos and the way I captioned them. It helped them see the houses in a new way,” said Maddy.

Yet despite her putting in the hours and leveraging on her strengths, her closing rate for the houses was low at 5% to 10%. Most of the time, she lost out to full-time agents who could show the houses whenever their clients wanted to have viewings, instead of having to wait till the weekend.

“I was pushing myself so hard, moonlighting on top of holding down a full-time job. Yet it wasn’t paying off. I felt very tired and discouraged,” she told Salt&Light.

She began to feel trapped in her radio job – her bread and butter – which no longer challenged her. Connecting with others through real estate made her feel alive. The creative side of her really wanted to take the plunge and become a full-time property agent, but the risk of income instability was too huge for her to bear.

Maddy with her family in Thailand. Photo by their older daughter Libby.

Oftentimes she would watch her salary deplete just a few days after it came in, as they had to pay recurring monthly bills.

“I was spread thin. Unable to see an end in sight, I lost all joy. I wondered why I wasn’t happy though I had so much going on for me with my dear family with me,” Maddy admitted.

At that time, her best friend, who had become a Christian, came to Thailand for work. They arranged to have a girls’ night out at her hotel.

“My husband gladly released the exhausted me to have some fun. Our plan was just to stay up late, have some good heart-to-heart talk and then sleep in the next morning,” Maddy told Salt&Light.

A strange thing happened in the hotel room 

While she was in the hotel room, Maddy noticed her best friend had a book next to her.

“What’s that?” she asked. Unknown to her, her best friend had felt prompted by God to bring along that book – Destined to Reign by Joseph Prince – on that trip.

Giving Maddy a somewhat hopeful look, her best friend replied: “It’s a book by my Pastor. Do you want to read it?”

“Is it about Jesus?” Maddy shot back.

“Kind of,” her friend answered hesitantly.

“Then, nope,” came Maddy’s firm response.

Maddy with her best friends. EJ (on the extreme right) was the friend who brought the book to the hotel room.

Both of them continued chatting till late at night, so Maddy planned to sleep in the next morning.

However, she woke up earlier than usual, feeling a deep restlessness in her spirit.

She glanced over at her friend, who was still in deep sleep.

She paced around the room multiple times – from the bed to the toilet and back – not knowing what to do with herself.

“I had no choice but to look at the book that was just sitting there. I was annoyed at myself for not bringing my own book so now I just had to open that book,” she recalled.

“Tell me about grace” 

It was a book about God’s grace. As she read its preface, her whole being was moved to the point that tears began flowing down her face.

“I felt like the prodigal son who was being welcomed home. The love of my Father washed over me. I realised that when the Holy Spirit moves, we cannot help but believe. We don’t choose God; He chooses us,” Maddy told Salt&Light.

In that moment, she found her answer. Previously she had been feeling lost and hopeless, but now she had discovered her answer to joy.

Her best friend heard her sniffling and woke up.

“What happened?” her friend asked worriedly, noticing that Maddy had picked up her book and was crying over it.

“Tell me about grace,” Maddy said to her.

As her friend shared with her about God’s grace, Maddy realised that she had not understood or heard about this amazing grace before.

“What I learnt about faith in the past was very works-based and I had felt a lot of condemnation,” said Maddy, who gave her life to Christ that day.

She went home with a spring in her step and told her husband that she had found her answer to having joy in life.

“It’s Jesus,” she exclaimed.

Her husband looked at her incredulously and muttered: “I thought I married a smart woman. What in the world happened?”

Undeterred by his response, Maddy smiled and assured him that everything would be all right.

Maddy and her family on an elephant ride in Thailand.

Shortly after, Maddy noticed that the closing rate for her housing projects shot up from 10% to 70%

“I didn’t do anything differently. Perhaps it was God’s favour or me bringing a renewed confidence and joy to my work, the sales just went up dramatically,” she said.

“It wasn’t about receiving blessings just because I became a believer. But God knew that was what me and my husband really needed at that moment – some form of encouragement.”

As the monthly income from her side gig increased from getting a few extra hundreds to bringing in thousands a month, Maddy began to wonder if this change would allow her to quit her radio job.

Yet it was a risk that she did not dare to take, given that she had a family to support.

But her desire to become a full-time property agent did not wane.

Maddy surrendered this conundrum to God in prayer.

“God, I don’t have the guts to quit my job though I want to go full-time into doing property,” she prayed.

“If You think I should and can go full-time in this industry, can you give me a sign? It must be a clear sign that I can’t miss,” she added.

Thereafter, Maddy resumed her life of juggling two jobs. She knew she was treading a fine line whenever she took her real estate calls during her radio programming job.

One day, she was called into her boss’s office. Maddy had always enjoyed a close and supportive relationship with her.

Maddy standing next to her boss Lina Damon at Virgin Radio.

“Our CEO in Australia has gotten wind that you are doing a sideline and getting distracted by it. We need you to be focused as competition has become stiffer in our industry,” her boss Lina told her.

Maddy immediately became defensive. She knew someone must have told on her.

“How could he have heard when he is in Australia?” asked Maddy as she began questioning and arguing with Lina.

Right at that moment, a message flashed through her mind: “You asked for a sign.”

It stopped Maddy right in her tracks as she knew the thought or message was definitely not from herself. It had to be God.

A 180 degree turn in their dialogue 

Maddy’s tone and the direction of the conversation changed.

“Actually, you are right. I wasn’t really focusing on my job. I might be losing interest in it,” she admitted to Lina.

This time, it was Lina who gave an incredulous gasp.

“Maddy, we are not asking you to quit. We are just hoping you would focus more on your job,” she said.

“I can’t. I have to give this up. I have gotten my sign,” Maddy said simply, before attempting to explain things further to her.

She handed in her resignation on the spot.

“I hope you know what you are doing,” Maddy’s husband said to her worriedly that night.

“I don’t. But my God does,” came her honest reply.

 In the months leading to her last day of work, Maddy noticed another curious thing happening.

In those days, most house buyers turned to the Google search engine to hunt for suitable housing listings. Hence, Maddy had to learn and do her own form of search engine optimisation (SEO).

On the day that she quit her radio job, her property website only showed up on the third page of Google searches for housing.

But on her last day at work, her website had gone all the way up and was featured on the first page.

“The number of leads I got from it exploded. God’s timing was perfect. It was only when I was free to go into real estate full-time and had the capacity to take on more that it happened,” Maddy told Salt&Light.

Living on monthly manna 

However, the early years of starting a property business was extremely difficult for Maddy.

She had no savings and was running on nearly no cashflow.

“If we didn’t met our targets for just one month, we wouldn’t have been able to pay rent, cover school fees or keep the business afloat,” she said.

“That was how tight it was. There were bills to pay on the last day of the month and often we were still praying and waiting for the money to come in just a few days before that,” Maddy recalled.

Yet, provision always came, month after month, sometimes on the very last day. It came in ways she could not have planned or predicted – a client confirming a deal, a payment clearing just in time and a door opening when they were running out of options.

“How many times do I have to do this for you to trust Me that I will provide?” Maddy heard God say to her one day while she was desperately praying about her financial situation.

“God is rarely early, but never too late. Month after month, year after year, that was how we got by. It was tiring and draining but His grace was always enough,” she said.

She learnt that her career and business journey have always been more of a “spiritual one” than anything else.

Moving back home to Singapore 

In 2009, Maddy and her children moved back to Singapore, while her husband remained in Thailand to handle their business there. She wanted their two daughters to attend church in Singapore as there were not many English-speaking ones in Thailand.

Maddy with her two daughters in earlier years: Libby Barber (aged 13, in green) and Alicia Barber (aged 4, in pink).

When she returned home, she tried her hand at real estate again but hated it as she felt the industry here was “too cutthroat”.

“I prayed and asked God if I ought to return to radio. I was a rather proud person so it would not have been easy for me to see all my former colleagues flying high in their careers, while I was back where I left off, only this time with a teenager and a toddler and a lot more bills to pay,” she admitted.

Eventually, she felt God opening a door for her when she was offered a part-time slot at SPH Radio on 91.3FM.

“I was thankful, but earning just over S$2,000 at nearly 40 years old then was humbling,” said Maddy, who was given the non-prime time slot of 10am to 2pm.

Maddy working with 91.3FM with fellow DJ Charmaine Yee.

For the next few years, Maddy continued to learn to trust in God and lean on Him as she waited for a better opportunity.

Her then boss appreciated the work that she did and offered her the position of host on the breakfast show – the most important shift for a radio station – of a new station they were launching.

“Who do you want to host it with?” he asked her.

“Jason Johnson,” she replied. She found Jason funny and believed they would hit it off well on air together.  

Her boss, however, felt that they needed a veteran male DJ to anchor the show instead. Jason was a movie and music reviewer at the time.

An experienced male anchor was hired, but Maddy felt that it would be a disaster given their lack of chemistry.

“I decided not to fight it but to go with the flow and wait it out. As a verse in Proverbs goes, a man can plan but it is God who directs his steps,” Maddy told Salt&Light.

The anchor pulled out at the last minute, just when the radio station Kiss92 was about to be launched. Maddy was granted her request: Jason came on board.

Maddy and Jason having fun while working at Kiss92.

As Jason was not a DJ then, Maddy ended up being the first female anchor on a breakfast show on radio in Singapore. Kiss92 went on to become the English station with the highest reach among audiences below 40. In 2020, it had the highest listenership among all English stations in 2020. Maddy was also consistently ranked as one of Singapore’s top English radio personalities over the years.

Maddy co-helmed the Kiss92 FM morning show for close to a decade.

“The Lord opened doors I never could have forced open myself. I have seen too many times that a ‘no’ from man doesn’t mean very much unless it’s a ‘no’ from God,” Maddy said.

Closed doors and detours as divine redirection

“That shift in perspective has changed everything for me. Rejection, closed doors and detours no longer feel like dead ends. I have come to see them for what they usually are: Redirection,” she told Salt&Light.

That is why she has been learning to prioritise prayer before embarking on work each day.  

Maddy going on air on Kiss92 FM.

For instance, she used to say a short prayer with her co-host daily before going on air on the evening show.

“We prayed that whatever we said on air that day, may it just touch the life of at least one person,” she added. Over time, she would have single mothers and divorcees coming up to her to say that they had cried on the way home while listening to her as what she said then had brought some comfort to them.

In 2021, Maddy left Kiss92 FM, after close to a decade of co-helming its breakfast show.

Jason and Arnold celebrating Maddy’s 50th birthday. The trio was well-known for helming the top-rated Kiss92 FM breakfast show.

She went on to focus on her bespoke jewellery business, Madly Gems.

“I felt I had done my best shows and my season at radio had come to an end. But God is the Creator and I felt a need to constantly create something. I love bespoke jewellery because it’s beautiful and it connects people,” she explained.

Maddy with a selection of her gemstone jewellery collection from Madly Gems.

While the world views jewellery in a material way, or as a form of stature, Maddy sees its place in honouring others and in celebrating significant occasions with loved ones.

A bespoke business centred on God’s beautiful creations

“The pieces are tied to stories and memories, and can be passed down from generation to generation in a family. Gems are one of God’s most beautiful and colourful creations – we hope women will feel beautifully confident in wearing colours and what they love,” she said.

Now in its 12^th year of business, Madly Gems has grown from being a niche startup to an award-winning leader in coloured gemstones. Besides its flagship store in Singapore, it has an international branch in Dubai and dedicated sourcing offices in Tanzania and Sri Lanka.

Maddy sorting through gemstones for Madly Gems.

“I will be the first to admit that when things are going well, it’s easy to take God and prayer for granted. Quiet time with the Lord often slips away, and can slip away for years,” she admitted.

Maddy, who worships at Trinity Methodist Church, has since been learning to wait on God and seek Him daily.

“Otherwise, sometimes we make decisions and think we are going with the flow of God, but actually we are going with the flow of man,” she said.

“In the Bible, the man of faith always has to ask God if he ought to go and fight the latest battle, even if God had given him victories in the last few battles. The last time God might have given the go ahead for a new product, market or partner, but it doesn’t mean that it’s still a go the next time,” Maddy noted.

The Barber family.

Recently, Maddy has been rediscovering how to let the Holy Spirit lead her into greater intimacy with God in prayer.

“Prayer calms my anxiety and shifts my posture from panic to surrender. I don’t walk into meetings quoting Scripture; I still make plans, strategise and do the work. But deep down, I know that unless the Lord builds the house, we toil in vain,” she said.

“I take comfort in that. Some people don’t like relinquishing control. But I thank God that I can pray and that I am not in control, because it means I was never meant to carry it all on my own.”

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