Profiles of Class of 2018 graduates

Class of 2018, Bolivia
Consultant at Tempting Talent in London

Tamara Burgos Rojas is working as a Consultant at Tempting Talent in London, focusing on senior appointments in executive search and talent solutions for clients in the US market. Tamara feels that her education at Yale-NUS has been a fundamental change that transformed the way she now sees the world.

Academically, her major in Global Affairs and minor in Economics have equipped her to perform complex critical analyses of current issues and draw connections between seemingly unrelated topics. This, coupled with internships at the Organization of American States and working as a marketing and business analyst for firms in Singapore and Bolivia, shaped her interest in working at the intersection of business and global affairs.

She adds that her most significant learning experiences at Yale-NUS happened outside the classroom while the College’s diverse cultures and perspectives broadened her horizons.

“Yale-NUS is a place where you’re constantly inspired by classmates, professors and staff who are not only brilliant and passionate about what they do but also have a relentless drive to make this world a better place. I think I appreciated this the most while working as a Residential College Advisor; designing community building programmes on campus and supporting first year students. Finally, I would say that one of the best things about life after graduating has been realising that the community you are part of at Yale-NUS lives on and it’s wonderful to stay in touch and meet with people so often.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Works in sales and marketing at legal tech firm Luminance

Amelia Chew has taken on a sales and marketing role at Luminance, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for the legal profession. Her foray into legal technology was borne out of frustration at the common narrative that robots will take over the jobs of lawyers as well as curiosity about how technology can be harnessed to make the provision of legal services more efficient and accessible. Amelia is excited to be in a role where she can help to shape the narrative that technology is a tool that lawyers can and should leverage on to make their work easier and serve their clients better.

As a member of the inaugural batch of DDP students, Amelia was encouraged to pursue the different learning opportunities her five years of education exposed her to.  She was inspired to look for work at the intersection of different disciplines (e.g. law and technology) and took up a variety of internships, which helped her gain a better understanding of both her interests and strengths.

“My interactions with my peers from different disciplines in Yale-NUS (who constantly amaze me with the exciting things that they’re working on) also opened my eyes to the possibilities of what I could do with both a Law degree and a Liberal Arts degree. I discovered that I was keen on exploring the intersection between law and technology instead of taking the conventional law firm route.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Management Associate at Ascendas-Singbridge

Dominic Choa is a management associate at Ascendas-Singbridge, a real estate developer and sustainable urban solution provider in Asia. He is currently in his second rotation at Leasing Operations where he helps with matters relating to tenancy deals and property tax. Prior to that, he had a stint in Property Management at Science Park II, where he was responsible for creating a pleasant working environment for Ascendas-Singbridge’s tenants’ in terms of infrastructure, renovation or operations of the building. Dominic appreciates that his major in Environmental Studies and minor in Urban Studies have provided him with a broad understanding of sustainability concerns within the built environment. He relishes the challenges in the real estate industry, as it spurs him to continually adopt a learner’s mindset.

“I think my liberal arts education at Yale-NUS really honed my intellectual curiosity to embrace complexity, be passionate about learning in new domains and not shy away from asking difficult questions, especially to my superiors. The broad range of the Common Curriculum meant that I had to confront learning in domains that I was not particularly comfortable in, which bred a kind of intellectual resilience and expanded my courage to do so yet again in my career in this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Film and Television Producer at Infinite Studios

Dynn Othman joined Infinite Studios, one of the biggest film and television production houses in Singapore and Southeast Asia, right after graduation. He manages the company’s creative assets, collaborating closely with writers, directors and actors to produce high-quality content for theatrical release and for programming on subscription-based video-on-demand platforms.

Dynn’s love for filmmaking began during his time in Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Film Studies. He carried this passion over to Yale-NUS, jumpstarting the school’s filmmaking culture during his time as President of Yale-NUS Filmmakers Society. With the help of equally passionate peers, he created the first film to be submitted as a capstone project under Yale-NUS’ Arts & Humanities major.

Dynn’s filmmaking ethos is heavily influenced by experiences he gained in Yale-NUS. He studied documentary filmmaking in Cuba on an arts scholarship from the College. Throughout his time in college, Dynn worked as a freelancer on various film and television production. During his last summer in college, he worked alongside costume designer Mary Vogt in the costume department of the film ‘Crazy Rich Asians’. Dynn hopes to see the filmmaking circle that he and his peers sparked in Yale-NUS continue to grow over the coming years.

“The philosophy, literature, sociology and political science classes helped broaden my understanding of humanity, while visual art and theatre classes in the Arts and Humanities major provided me with interesting techniques I could apply and integrate into my personal filmmaking process. I was free to experiment, fail and succeed on my own terms.”

Class of 2018, USA
Research analyst at Marsh & McLennan Insights

As a research analyst at Marsh & McLennan Insights, Angela Ferguson will advise societies, governments, and industries on building resilience in the face of key regional risks. She will focus on a diverse range of contemporary issues including energy, societal ageing, infrastructure, technology, and cyber security.

Having majored in Urban Studies, Angela hopes to apply her knowledge and skills toward advancing sustainable development and making communities more liveable. She has worked in education, policy, social entrepreneurship, and journalism – with each of these experiences underscoring the need for holistic flourishing that balances environmental, social, and economic needs.

Angela’s year-long internship with the U.S. Department of State, Office of Global Women’s Issues highlighted how the gendered impacts of climate change relate to economic underdevelopment and political instability. Additionally, Angela’s work with the Brunswick Group, Interface Asia, and Krakakoa Chocolate drew her attention to the role that businesses, both large and small, can play in sustainable development.

In 2015, Angela won the International New York Times Writing Competition for her reflections on global education. She currently serves as an elected member of the Yale-NUS College Alumni Council.

“I’m grateful for what I’ve learned not only in the liberal arts classroom at Yale-NUS, but also through peer learning initiatives like Intergroup Dialogue, the Women’s Dialogues, and the Leadership Certificate. The past four years have taught me that big questions and open-minded inquiry allow a community to dig deeper and see different dimensions to an issue.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Business Associate at Visa, Inc.

Anjali Hazra is currently a Business Associate in Visa’s Graduate Development Program. In this role, Anjali will spend two years rotating through four different functional teams in Visa before joining a team permanently. Throughout this process, Anjali will work with teams in Visa that navigate topics within the payment ecosystem such as cybersecurity, product deployment, business strategy, and government regulations.

As a Global Affairs major, Anjali studied development topics such as poverty, gender equality, education, and urban planning. This academic exposure as well as her work experiences in an education start-up, a social enterprise, and a political risk consulting firm, have underscored the importance of creating positive change through businesses or otherwise. In Visa, Anjali hopes to explore how payments technology can act as a force for positive socio-economic development in emerging markets. While it initially seemed daunting to join a graduate development programme, Anjali soon realised that her multidisciplinary education had enabled her to be more perceptive and attentive to certain topics such as the impact of policy or socio-economic changes on business.

“The broad-based learning approach that Yale-NUS adopts encouraged me to explore a variety of pathways instead of limiting myself to what a Global Affairs major would typically do. Moreover, I am grateful that my liberal arts education exposed me to such meaningful conversations with my peers that helped me gain perspectives about the world around me.”

Class of 2018, Malaysia
Dean’s Fellow at Yale-NUS College

Tinesh Indrarajah is a Dean’s Fellow at Yale-NUS College, serving as a mentor  for students while contributing to the development of the College’s programmes and initiatives. As one of the three inaugural graduates from the Concurrent Degree Programme (CDP) with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY School), Tinesh is a proud ambassador of Yale-NUS and strongly believes in the value of a liberal arts education. He notes that his Yale-NUS experience has enabled him to be comfortable engaging with materials from different disciplines and mediums in order to arrive at reasoned arguments. The active class engagement aspect of the Yale-NUS curriculum also equipped him with the skills to contribute effectively to discussions at LKYSPP, since the seminar structure was similar to classes at Yale-NUS.

“As the first batch of CDP students, being part of the partnership between Yale-NUS and LKY School has been a meaningful experience. In my capacity as an ambassador for Yale-NUS at the LKY school, it has made me proud whenever professors or students remark about the value of the Yale-NUS educational model. My peers and I feel good knowing that our academic success and community contributions are being recognised.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Pursuing a training contract with Lee & Lee law firm

Christopher Khew is pursuing a training contract with Lee & Lee law firm. He hopes to practise law after taking the Singapore bar examinations.

After spending summer in Beijing for a Chinese language programme in his sophomore year, Christopher found that his experience “shattered many preconceived notions” that he had about China as a country and led him to read up more on China’s history, including Confucianism. The DDP student decided to write his capstone on a topic that married both his degrees – by examining the relationship between Confucianism and democracy. Christopher argued in his paper that Confucian ethics can be compatible with the idea of participatory democracy.

Having studied at both Yale-NUS and NUS Law, Christopher feels that the exposure to different ideas and ways of thinking outside the law makes one more adaptable and able to see things from different perspectives.

“The different ideas and ways of thinking opens up your mind and makes it easier to draw connections between what you learn in law school, and other ideas that you encounter outside of it.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Associate at the Singapore Economic Development Board

Damian Lee is currently working as an associate at the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), a government agency responsible for strategies that enhance Singapore’s position as a global centre for business, innovation and talent. As an associate, Damian’s role involves crafting industry development strategies for Singapore in the area of mobility, which includes dealing with trends in autonomous and electric vehicles, and on-demand transportation services.

While at Yale-NUS, Damian did a summer internship with EDB and his positive experience made him decide to join the organisation after graduating. During his internship, he found the work at EDB to be challenging and complex, and he appreciated the collaborative culture there.

“Yale-NUS has positively impacted me in two ways. Firstly, it has enabled me to present and articulate my thoughts more clearly and succinctly at work. Secondly, Yale-NUS has cultivated a habit of critical thinking where I often question whether there is a better way of doing things.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Enrolled in the Doctor of Medicine (MD) programme at Duke-NUS Medical School

Lim Chu Hsien is enrolled in the Doctor of Medicine (MD) programme at Duke-NUS Medical School. Before she decided on pursuing medicine, Chu Hsien found that she enjoyed having no concrete plans within the first two years at Yale-NUS College. Eventually, she realised that her primary interest was in having a genuine interaction with people and making meaning in the work she does. Coupled with her longstanding interest in science, she was motivated to pursue medicine and registered for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

Chu Hsien has found that Yale-NUS offered her an unparalleled exposure to research, with the opportunity to collaborate with faculty members and access to state-of-the-art research resources. Yale-NUS’s immersive and rigorous research experience has helped to sharpen her scientific reasoning skills, coupled with a multidisciplinary approach of looking at an issue. Chu Hsien believes such an approach will help her better grasp and take on the complexities in medicine and healthcare.

“My experiences from Yale-NUS College’s experiential learning programmes  (e.g. Learning Across Boundaries, Week 7 and semester abroad) have instilled within me the sensitivity to cultural nuances, and will continue motivating me to appreciate health as a dynamic interplay of biological, mental and social wellness that takes on different meanings across cultures. This helps to heighten my empathy towards others.”

Class of 2018, India
Software Engineer at Google

Pratyush More is a software engineer at Google, presently based in Munich, Germany. As a developer of Google’s Identity Platform, Pratyush builds systems that enable billions of people to securely and privately access their Google accounts.

In addition to providing a solid technical foundation for his work, Pratyush feels that his education at Yale-NUS has also helped him develop strong written and verbal communications skills. He notes that such skills are important for a software engineer as his projects at work involve not just multiple people, but multiple teams, and the ability to clearly explain, document and present his work is an invaluable skill.

“One of my favourite learnings while at Yale-NUS is the following: ‘Very often, we are so occupied with finding the right answers, that we forget to ask the right questions.’ This guides me incredibly in my work. Since I’m tasked with using technology to impact people’s lives, it’s not enough just to be able to solve a technical problem. It’s equally important to ask why we are solving that problem in the first place.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Associate at global strategy consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting

As an Associate with L.E.K. Consulting, Nur Diyanah Binte Kamarudin is involved in data gathering and analysis through primary or secondary research. She credits her experience with the Yale-NUS Common Curriculum for diversifying her knowledge bank, which allowed her to be able to connect more meaningfully with the people she meets. Diyanah hopes that this will give her an edge in the field of consulting, a network-driven industry.

A Philosophy, Politics and Economics major, Diyanah finds that she was challenged to be more multidisciplinary in her thinking to uncover connections between different fields. She intends to apply the same critical thinking skills to her role in consulting, where each assigned case can differ greatly.

“I will definitely miss my professors. They have demanded much of me intellectually but are always kind and interested in my wellbeing outside the classroom setting.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Software Engineer at Facebook, Inc

Aaron Ong works in Facebook, Inc.’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, USA, as a software engineer. In his role, Aaron applies his technical knowledge and analytical skills to develop software products. Aaron collaborates with both technical and non-technically trained colleagues on a daily basis, and he is thankful that the diverse Yale-NUS College community has honed his ability to communicate technical concepts effectively to a wide range of audiences.

“Software engineering is increasingly a people-oriented role. I am tasked to create products that people want to use, and write code that other engineers can understand. These tasks require empathy to accomplish, and my liberal arts education at Yale-NUS College was a great way to develop that.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Pursuing a training contract with Drew & Napier LLP law firm

Ong Chee Yeow is fulfilling a training contract with law firm Drew & Napier LLP as a prerequisite for taking the Singapore bar examinations before he can practise law.

As a member of the inaugural batch of DDP students, Chee Yeow’s law experience has been influenced by his time in Yale-NUS. Academically, his liberal arts education allowed him to better understand the institutions that surround the law, which gives the law meaning. His various interdisciplinary experiences at the College also enriched his law education.

At school, Chee Yeow participated in multiple moot competitions, including the 2018 Jessup Moot Competition, which is widely regarded as the most prestigious international mooting competition in the world. He has also previously emerged champion in the 2016 IASLA Space Law Moot Court Competition and 2016 Asia Cup Moot Court Competition.

“The law is not a discipline unto itself – it exists to regulate and govern activities and relationships in other spheres of society, be it commerce, families, international relations, etc. My liberal arts education at Yale-NUS allowed me to learn more about the world in which the law is situated, which in turn gave me a better appreciation of how the law develops, and how it can be improved.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Pursuing a master’s degree in Computation for Design and Optimisation at MIT, before joining the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech).

Gin Ong is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Computation for Design and Optimisation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), before she joins the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech).

Gin Ong majored in Mathematical, Computational and Statistical Sciences (MCS), and has an interest in using computational methods and techniques. Gin hopes to apply the technical knowledge gleaned through her education to help Singapore achieve the goal of becoming a “Smart Nation”.

Gin’s summer internship with the Services and Digital Economy department in the National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF) in 2016 highlighted the importance of the knowledge of computational tools with regards to decision-making in the civil service. In addition, her participation in the international competition Data Science Game in 2016 introduced her to the potential of modern computational approaches for tackling urban challenges. Gin is also a firm believer that MCS and technology should never be an exclusive space, and that everyone should be able to pursue fields in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

“I feel that the programme at Yale-NUS has trained me to be a highly motivated, independent and resilient learner, and these are traits that I believe will be useful in whatever role I choose to take in the future.”

Class of 2018, Singapore
Embarking on a 40-day art residency under the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts

Teo Xiao Ting is embarking on a 40-day art residency in Virginia, under the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts from August to October 2018. Writing is something close to Xiao Ting’s heart and she hopes to use it to help others in her future career. She hopes to finish her first poetry manuscript and expand on her writing practice to more diverse forms of writing, such as critical writing.

Xiao Ting is also currently doing freelance work for iMMERSiVELY, a virtual and augmented reality start-up, as a facilitator and events assistant. She hopes to use her skills developed at the arts residency to explore the field of art therapy thereafter.

Initially a Psychology major, Xiao Ting switched to Arts and Humanities in her final year, to explore writing more in-depth. In 2017, she won the Golden Point Award for English Poetry, for a compilation of  five poems she had written. The poems  integrated what she had learnt in psychology with the beauty of the written language that she had grown to appreciate as an Arts and Humanities major.

“The different courses that the A&H major offers allowed me to look at art in a way that is not rooted in conventional categories. Through courses like Drawing Process, I was able to explore a different mode of making, which has also since fed into the way I write. Due to the different mediums that I was exposed to as part of the A&H curriculum, I was able to synthesise the different threads of both psychology and the arts, and to see how the two intersect.”

Class of 2018, Bulgaria
Consultant with global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman

While varied experiential learning opportunities contributed to Martin Vasev’s experience at Yale-NUS College, it was his academic experience that led him to pursue a career in consultancy. Martin believes that the consulting field requires critical thinking, quick and methodological analysis of information and numbers, as well as concise and structured thinking. These skills were emphasised in many of the classes he took at Yale-NUS and he hopes to apply them to his new role.

Martin is excited about the similarities between working in consulting and the liberal arts education model – the exposure to different industries, the team-based nature of the work and the mentorship system with the senior consultants – all of which he finds are similar to the multidisciplinary, collaborative and supportive spirit he enjoyed at Yale-NUS College.

“The events in the business world can rarely be understood by looking at them from only one perspective. As the problems we deal with are becoming increasingly complicated and interconnected, our solutions and education also need to keep up with this trend.”