U@LIVE
ONE SPEAKER. 10 MINUTES. BOUNDLESS INSPIRATION. U@live is a monthly guest speaker series that showcases NUS alumni who are passionate about their causes. The one-hour show hosted by veteran TV producer Viswa Sadasivan at the Shaw Foundation Alumni House is also streamed live on the U@live website.
Denise P hua, Arts & Social Sciences ‘83
Ivan Heng Subhas Anandan Aseem Thakur
Denise Phua
DETERMINED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE When her son was diagnosed with autism, Denise Phua made a decision to create opportunities for mainstream education and employment for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. For 20 years she was a career powerhouse. But when her son Jun-Yi was diagnosed with autism at the age of three in May 1999, Denise Phua gave up her fulltime career to care for him. Back then, Ms Phua’s options were to migrate to a country with special needs education systems, or stay put in Singapore and make the best of what was available — and along the way, help those who did not have the same luxury of choice. Today Ms Phua, an Arts & Social Sciences ‘83 graduate, is recognised for her work in blurring the divide between the abled and those with special needs — she has worked hard to promote the inclusion of special needs persons in mainstream education and employment. Ms Phua, 52, is also serving on a full-time, voluntary basis as President of the Autism Resource Centre (ARC) Singapore. 30
ALUMNUS
She is also a school supervisor at two special schools, Pathlight School and Eden School. As with all worthy achievements, hers is one of small beginnings; in 1999, she started volunteering at ARC. The needs she witnessed and the possibilities she envisioned, including a society that recognises that autism falls on a spectrum, and that for highfunctioning autistic children like her son (now 15 and who is gifted in art), the then-existent ‘one-size-fits-all’ special schools were not enough. This spurred her and several volunteers to start Pathlight School in 2004, the first autism-focused school in Singapore. The school, now at Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10, offers an autistic-focused education for students who are cognitively able to cope with mainstream academics. Its curriculum includes a focus on life-readiness skills. Its two key values are normalisation — students are groomed with the aim of integrating them into mainstream society; and dignity — to have the same
access to education, employment space and social space as any other child does. Pathlight’s student enrolment grew from its initial intake of 41 students in 2003 to its current 603. There is now a long waitlist. The school has always been run, thanks to Ms Phua’s corporate background, like a corporation, with tight standard operating procedures, adequate teacher training and results that are measurable. Ms Phua replicated Pathlight’s success at Eden School (formerly known as Singapore Autism School), drawing on her networks, marketing skills and ability to balance the books and pull in the necessary funding and much-needed resources to keep the then-struggling school going. Ironically, the success of Eden School has attracted criticism — but for good reasons. “Now it is also acquiring a very long waitlist and sometimes we get ‘bashed’ for that. In a way, we are the victims of our own success,” she says unapologetically. Well-run schools for special needs children are a scarce resource, and with about 216 new cases of autism being diagnosed annually (according to ARC), the need is growing. In 2004, Ms Phua resigned from her position as managing director of the Centre for Effective Leadership which she had founded in 1993. In 2005, she was tapped for a career in politics and is
currently Member of Parliament in the Kampong Glam ward, the neighbourhood she grew up in. She is married to Roland Tay, another former corporate high-flyer who set up the Professor Brawn Café, an eatery that hires autistic employees to give them a shot at the working world. The couple also have a daughter Yi-Xin, 17. Ms Phua’s proudest achievement is the implementation of the satellite class model, whereby students from both Pathlight and Eden are given access to classes in mainstream schools such as Chong Boon Secondary School and Bishan Park Secondary School. She sees this as a key tool in the de-marginalisation of those with special needs — it gives the special needs students an opportunity to be integrated into society at an early age, while helping mainstream students learn to accept and live among those who are different from them. She is determinedly canvassing more support from her peers in the industry. “I don’t think there are enough people who want these children in the mainstream schools. If you’re a teacher, a principal or a person of influence, I want you to consider opening up your schools to these children; they’re part of the Singapore family, and they deserve a chance to be there.” By Yong Yung Shin Denise Phua spoke on Aug 22.
Subhas Anandan, Law ‘70
ACCESS TO COUNSEL AND RIGHT OF SILENCE The well-recognised criminal lawyer talks about why he stands in the gap between the legal rights of an arrested person and the reality of how that person is then treated. He is one of Singapore’s bestknown criminal lawyers, but Subhas Anandan never intended to make a career out of defending suspected criminals. “I became a criminal lawyer by accident. When I first started practice I had a lot of clients who came from my kampung, my neighbourhood, which was quite rough. They were all involved in criminal matters,” he recalls. Word of the young lawyer’s prowess in the courtroom spread fast, and more and more people asked him to represent them. The second of five children, Mr Anandan was born in Kerala, India.
When he was five months old, his family migrated to Singapore in search for a better life, and his father found work as a clerk for the British Royal Navy. A graduate from the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Law in 1970, Mr Anandan has been involved in more than 2,000 cases related to murder, drug trafficking, corporate fraud, insider trading, criminal breach of trust, misappropriation of funds and terrorism throughout his 40 yearlong career. Some of these have been Singapore’s most high-profile trials such as that of ‘One-Eyed Dragon’ Tan Chor Jin and the kidney transplant case involving retail tycoon Tang Wee Sung. Some are considered landmark JAN-MAR 2012
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