For Germaine Chua, the wide red cycling paths stretching across Singapore are the most visible reminder of why her job matters.
Between 2018 and 2020, she was part of a team that worked on strengthening the connectivity and safety of Singapore’s active mobility network. At that time, she was an assistant director at the Ministry of Transport (MOT) and many cycling paths across the island were still fragmented or unevenly distributed.
Today, the 34-year-old takes her two young children out for walks and cycling trips in their Toa Payoh neighbourhood on weekends. Whether they are strolling on the footpath or cycling along the wide red paths, she sees how well-planned infrastructure gives families safe spaces to ride and walk, provides residents easier ways to get around and offers communities places to meet.
In these everyday moments, public service is no longer policy on paper but something Germaine and fellow Singaporeans experience first-hand. Growing up in Singapore, she had always been conscious of how public systems – from transport to education and even passport collection – shape everyday life.
“For me, joining the public service was a way to contribute back to Singapore,” says Germaine, a recipient of the Public Service Commission (PSC) Scholarship (Foreign Service).
“There is a sense of fulfilment that comes with seeing infrastructure across Singapore come to fruition and knowing you had contributed to it.”
After junior college, she did not have a fixed career destination in mind but knew she wanted her work to serve a larger purpose. This aspiration nudged her to apply for the scholarship, one of the most prestigious pathways into public service.
She was initially drawn to the foreign service, curious about how this “little red dot punches above its weight on the international stage” through foreign policy and diplomacy. Her scholarship from the PSC funded her undergraduate studies in philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford as well as a master of arts in regional studies – East Asia at Harvard University.
Her learning did not stop in the classroom. A summer school stint at Peking University in Beijing and overseas internships at the embassies in Jakarta and Seoul gave her a wider lens on how public policy and diplomacy operate in different contexts.
Across her 12-year public service career, each of Germaine’s postings has added a new layer to her understanding of how the different public agencies work together behind the scenes to serve a common purpose, and why her work matters.
Her first posting after returning from overseas studies was with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Singapore (MFA) – first on the China desk and later, at the High Commission of the Republic of Singapore in Kuala Lumpur – where she learnt that diplomacy is built as much on ground relationships as it is on high-level meetings. After three and a half years with MFA, she moved to MOT, where she looked at policies that support walking and cycling as part of Singapore’s wider mobility landscape.
“There is a sense of fulfilment that comes with seeing infrastructure across Singapore come to fruition and knowing you had contributed to it.”
– Germaine Chua, recipient of the PSC Scholarship (Foreign Service)
“We were at a point where the number of personal mobility devices and bicycles was growing faster than infrastructure and culture could catch up. Policy had to move fast to keep people safe – through enhanced regulations, increased enforcement, and a greater emphasis on education and communication on how to share paths graciously,” she says.
In 2020, she moved to the Strategy Group under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), where she served as deputy director in the Strategy and Policy Planning Division as well as special assistant to the head of Civil Service. There, she gained a whole-of-Government perspective, learning to connect the dots across agencies and to shape Singapore’s long-term future.
“One habit that stayed with me since my time in the PMO was learning to step back, ask what an issue means for Singapore as a whole, and how the different agencies can work together to address it,” she says.
These experiences reinforced her understanding that in public service, complex issues often require balancing differing viewpoints across agencies and stakeholders – a process that draws less on fixed theory than on the ability to think critically and work through problems collaboratively.
Today, those concerns have only grown more complex and interconnected. More than two years into her current posting with the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), she is currently holding two closely linked portfolios. In the Resource and Carbon Division, she works with agencies – such as PUB, the national water agency, and the Energy Market Authority – to secure power, water and renewable energy to support investments into Singapore.
At the same time, she works with energy and chemical companies on Jurong Island through the Energy and Renewables Division, supporting their transformation as the island becomes a testbed for low-carbon solutions.
From March 2026, Germaine will take on a new role in EDB’s Industry Manpower Development Division, where her next challenge lies in helping to ensure economic growth continues to create good jobs and opportunities. As with every new posting, she intends to approach it with the same openness and humility that helped her find her footing in earlier postings.
“I know I can tap on others in the team who have deeper domain knowledge and experience, while at the same time bringing value through my understanding of how the wider public service operates and the networks I have built over time,” she says.
| About the Public Service Commission Scholarship The Public Service Commission (PSC) Scholarship is Singapore’s premier government scholarship, awarded to outstanding individuals with a passion to serve in the public service. It offers scholars the opportunity to pursue their studies at top universities worldwide, entry into the Public Service Leadership Programme (the central leadership development programme in the Singapore Public Service) and exposure to diverse experiences through structured rotations across government ministries and agencies. |
This article is brought to you by the Public Service Commission.
