Swiss Cottage
Secondary School.

Elected as President of the Publications & Media Club in my final year at Swiss Cottage. In this role, I led a team of students managing the school's publications, social media presence, and media coverage for school events. The role required balancing creative vision with operational management — setting editorial direction, managing workflows, and developing junior members.

One of the most challenging aspects was shifting the club's output from reactive (covering what happened) to intentional (shaping what the school's story looked like). That distinction — between documenting and directing — is something I've carried forward into how I think about communication and media.

As a Science Ambassador, I represented the school in outreach and engagement activities related to STEM. This involved conducting demonstrations, mentoring younger students, and participating in programmes designed to inspire interest in the sciences.

It reinforced something I'd already started to believe: the ability to explain something clearly is often harder than understanding it yourself. Teaching is its own skill.

Served as the class PE Representative in my final year — coordinating with teachers on physical education matters, organising class-level sports activities, and acting as a liaison for school-wide sports initiatives.

Served as class Mathematics Representative for two years. This role involved liaising between students and the mathematics department, helping organise study sessions, and supporting classmates who needed assistance with the subject.

It gave me early experience in peer leadership — leading not through authority, but through being genuinely useful to the people around you.

In 2025, I hosted a workshop for Secondary 3 students choosing their subject combinations for O-Levels. The session was designed to demystify the decision-making process — sharing honest perspectives on different subject combinations, the workload they involve, and how to think about long-term goals when choosing.

Public speaking is something I've worked hard to get comfortable with. Hosting this workshop was a chance to practice explaining complex, personal decisions in a way that was genuinely useful rather than just informative.

Beyond formal titles, I tried to lead in the everyday sense: showing up prepared, helping classmates when they were stuck, taking initiative when things needed to happen and no one else was stepping forward.

I've learned that the most meaningful leadership often happens in the margins — not in meetings or presentations, but in the small moments where you choose to do something difficult because it's the right thing to do.

In 2024, I participated in a leadership exchange programme to Brisbane, Australia. The programme connected student leaders from Singapore with their counterparts in Australian schools, focusing on cross-cultural exchange, collaborative problem-solving, and leadership development.

The experience of working with students from a completely different educational system — different assumptions, different ways of approaching problems — was genuinely eye-opening. It challenged some things I'd taken for granted about how schools work and what leadership looks like in different contexts.

It also reinforced something I think is underrated: the value of simply being in a new environment. When the familiar scaffolding is removed, you learn a lot about what you actually think and who you actually are.