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Nadia is a PhD student at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).
As a member of Malaysia’s Administrative and Diplomatic Service, she has served in different capacities for the Government of Malaysia since 2004. Her recent role was as the Private Secretary to the 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia from 2018 to 2020, where her responsibilities focussed on public management reform. From 2004 to 2018, she has worked closely with four Cabinet Ministers, delivering strategic assignments in the public works, tourism and culture and higher education ministries — all of which have been invaluable in shaping her skills as a public administrator.
Domestically, she has successfully delivered fast-track physical projects, including a six month-deadline construction project worth US$20 million in time for Malaysia to host the ASEAN Skills Competition in 2008. In a different setting, she led substantial human capital development projects for the tourism industry during the rolling out of Government Economic Transformation Programme (2011-2015) - a major policy drive in a bid to elevate Malaysia’s status as a high-income nation. At the global front, she was highly involved in coordinating the country’s international relations with multilateral organisations namely UN, UNWTO, UNESCO, APEC, OECD and OIC for the tourism and higher education sector (2015-2018).
Nadia holds a Bachelor in Quantity Surveying (Honours) from the University of Malaya, and a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), National University of Singapore (NUS). She was awarded the LKYSPP Gold Medal for Best Governance Study Project during her MPA – due to the promising impact on a proposed digital transformation policy project to improve socio-economic conditions in North Jakarta, Indonesia.
Her current research at IIPP focuses on understanding the link between public sector reforms and digital transformation. The study will look into the evolution of public sector reforms and digital transformation strategies in the developed and emerging nations. As of 2021, Nadia serves as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant (PGTA) for the module ‘Creative Bureaucracies’ led by Rainer Kattel in the IIPP’s Master of Public Administration (MPA) programme.