NUS LKY

Shermon Cruz

Shermon Cruz is the founder, director, and chief futurist of the Center for Engaged Foresight, a futures thinking and strategic foresight innovation hub operating globally based in Manila. He is currently the Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists, the world’s leading body of professional futurists with 500 members in over 40 countries. Prof. Cruz is also the co-founder, vice-president, and lead futurist of the Philippine Futures Thinking Society, the first and only futures thinking practitioners organization in the Philippines, Chair of the Millennium Project Philippines Node, Senior Curator of the UNESCO Global Futures Literacy Summit, Regional Editor of the Journal of Futures Studies and Chair of the recent 2020 Asia Pacific Futures Network Summit. He has collaborated with the best futurists and futures organizations in the world. He is a supervising and research fellow at the Development Academy of the Philippines Futures Thinking Program and futures thinking lecturer at the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance. He previously worked as business continuity and risk management leader for companies like Accenture, EY, and PwC and former director at the Philippine Foresight Education and Innovation Research at Northwestern University Laoag.

For more about Shermon and his futures and foresight work, see www.engagedforesight.com

About Organisation: As a forerunner of futures literacy and futures studies in the Philippines and Asia, the Center for Engaged Foresight (CEF) helps create avenues for people, communities, companies and public organizations to learn and apply foresight in leadership, decision-making and change management, risk management, business continuity, emergency and disaster preparedness, crisis management, strategic planning, governance, urban planning and development, public and strategy development.

The terrain of futures thinking, and strategic foresight is vast, and our approach are grounded on practical action and emergence via our engaged foresight framework – Discover, Design, Justify and Apply approach.

Through futures literacy (theories, knowledge and content), futures research (futures method) and strategic foresight (applied) courses, trainings and workshops, we emphasize the value of foundational futures knowledge as well as individual and institutional foresight capacity to reframe, invent and implement alternative and preferred futures now.

Iva Aminuddin

Ms Iva Aminuddin currently heads the Learning Futures Group at the Civil Service College Singapore (CSC). A career public service learning and organizational change practitioner, Iva has served as Deputy Director at CSC’s Institute of Public Sector Leadership overseeing the design, development and delivery of public sector whole-of-government leadership milestone programmes. She led CSC’s Applied Simulation Training Laboratory (CAST) from 2013-2015 and was Assistant Director, Change Capacity and Innovation at the PS21 Office, Public Service Division of the Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore from 2011-2013. Iva’s capability development experience also includes UNDP, World Bank and ADB funded capability development initiatives for governments in ASEAN and South Asia (2005-2010).

She has a Masters in Learning and Organisational Change from Northwestern University (2015-2017), Masters in International Studies (2004-2005) and a Bachelor of Social Science in Political Science with Honors (2001-2005) from the National University of Singapore.

About Organisation: The Learning Futures Group (LFG) aim to be at the forefront of innovation, charting the path to meaningful learning experiences in support of a future-ready Public Service. We work with internal and external partners to identify future learning trends and develop prototypes and pilots for potential application in CSC. This supports the organisation’s efforts to scale impactful learning innovation across the Singapore Public Service.

Ora-Orn Poocharoen

Ora is the Director of the School of Public Policy at Chiang Mai University (2018present). In addition, she has been appointed to the United Nation’s Committee of Experts on Public Administration (Jan 2018 – July 2021). She holds a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She is currently working on the concept of Smart Sustainable Governance, where sustainability and justice is the focal point for governance outcomes. With over 15 years of professional academic experience, Ora has advised and conducted research for various institutions in Thailand and overseas, including the Asia Foundation, Oxfam, the Asia Productivity Organization, and the International Budget Partnership. She regularly conducts training on foresight techniques for public agencies in Thailand.

About Organisation: The Chiang Mai University School of Public Policy (SPP) is the first public policy school established in Thailand. Aside from conducting high-quality research and providing consultations to governments, the school also offers graduate programs in public policy for academically ambitious students from within the region and beyond.

Cheryl Chung

Cheryl is the Programme Director of the Executive Education department at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.  

Before joining the School in 2015, Cheryl worked in the Singapore Government where she led futures projects across several ministry portfolios for 8 years. She entered the world of public policy futures as part of the pioneer team for the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Futures Group. There, she led projects exploring the industry development potential of trends such as big data, and 3D-printing. After MTI, she moved to the Strategic Policy Office, under the Prime Minister’s Office, where she co-led the Emerging Strategic Issues Project v2.0 and led research work on the Evolving Role of the State. She also designed, developed, and delivered their in-house training programme, Futurecraft, focusing on foresight communication. Cheryl’s most recent ministry posting was to the Ministry of Transport where she helped to start the Ministry’s futures team and led the development of their policy framework for Autonomous Vehicles.

About Organisation: At Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Executive Education, we empower leaders with the skills to thrive in a complex, fast changing world. Our programmes encourage critical reflection, impact valuable knowledge about the governance and policy making, and create opportunities for learning across departmental boundaries and intellectual disciplines. The diverse and international faculty helps to equip individuals and organisations with multiple perspectives to make sense of the complexity they face. By integrating theory and practice, we help them achieve a deeper understanding of how they can be more effective managers, leaders and changemakers.

Incubated at the Executive Education department, the Executive Education Singapore Future (EESF) seeks to strengthen engagements with the Singapore public service, and build on its existing futures thinking and scenario planning capacity to enhance our executive programmes and consulting projects. EESF serves a key node for equipping Singaporeans on key governance challenges of the future, through capability development and community engagements. EESF also endeavours to amplify the School’s thought leadership on Singapore’s emerging strategic issues, and expand the network of futures and policy practitioners in Singapore and beyond.