Malminderjit Singh
Chief Operating Officer, Asia Pacific, Speyside Group
Malminderjit has more than 18 years of work experience, including as a public affairs, communications and government relations leader. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer and Regional Director of leading corporate affairs and public policy consultancy Speyside Group, overseeing its Asia Pacific business.
Before this he was Managing Director of the Singapore office of the Penta Group, an American-based stakeholder relations firm which had acquired global public affairs consultancy Hume Brophy, where Mal had first forayed into formal consulting work.
In consulting, he has worked on strategic communications, issues management, crisis communications, media relations, public policy and government relations campaigns for large MNCs and start-ups in the tech, healthcare, travel, sustainability and financial services sectors across the region. He has also been a speech writer to several members of parliament and advised political leaders on political and policy communications.
Prior to consulting, Mal was the Editor (Digital News) at CNA, where he was responsible for the CNA Commentaries section and involved in the relaunch of the podcasts section. During this period, he led the production of many groundbreaking stories on COVID-19, the global economy, the US and Singapore elections, among others. His previous experience in journalism was as a Correspondent with The Business Times where he worked on the foreign news, trade and economics and SME desks before being made responsible of the paper’s shipping & marine, and oil & gas sections. During his time at BT, Mal broke several notable stories including on the fall of OW Bunker and its corruption scandal, the ban of ST Kinetics in India following bribery allegations and several domestic political-economic stories.
Besides media, Mal has worked in academia as the Chief Editor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and as Executive Director of the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SICCI). He has also worked in trade negotiation for the Ministry of Trade and Industry where he worked on the ASEAN Economic Community and other multilateral free trade agreements and on the Strategic Goods Control at Singapore Customs.
Malminderjit also contributes back to society and currently chairs the Sikh Advisory Board, which advises the Singapore government on all matters pertaining to the Sikh community. He serves on Singapore’s National Steering Committee of Racial and Religious Harmony, works with under-privileged communities as a Board of Visitor member to the Singapore Prisons and to Children and Young People’s Homes, while also co-founding The Birthday Collective to give a platform to emerging voices in Singapore to shape the country’s future. He has also been appointed the Chairman of Harmony Circles at Kampong Chai Chee. He currently serves as an Advisor to ASEAN Business Youth Association, and to Mental ACT. In addition, he was elected by his industry peers as a Council member of the Institute of Public Relations Singapore (IPRS).
For his contributions to society, he was recently appointed by the President of Singapore as a Justice of the Peace. In 2022, Malminderjit was awarded the Friends of MCCY Award by the Singapore Government for his interfaith and intra-faith work and received the NTU Alumni Award from his alma mater for community leadership. He was also recognised by the European Union this year as a Visitor Programme delegate.
