International diplomacy

 Two years into my time in Japan, a good friend of mine suggested I look into a career in the Foreign Office. At the time, I didn’t believe the civil service or diplomatic service was for people who looked like me. I thought it was only an option for people from the “majority”. But my now-wife helped me prepare for the exams, and I joined the diplomatic fast stream in 2002.

I started on the NATO desk and worked in the Iraq Emergency Unit when the Iraq War broke out.  I then had the opportunity to work in Iraq as the Political Officer for southern Iraq, and arrived in the country the day after Saddam Hussein was captured.

After Iraq, I was posted to Uganda for three years, which was particularly poignant for me. My mother was a Ugandan Asian who was expelled from the country at gunpoint by Idi Amin's forces in the early 1970s. The opportunity to go to Uganda came about by chance, but I thought it was quite important to close that circle in my family's life.

The job was incredible. I spent a lot of it reporting on the conflict in northern Uganda between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan military, shining a light on a conflict that wasn’t being widely reported on. The Lord’s Resistance Army was infamous for its use of child soldiers, and I met so many poor children who had been brainwashed into fighting. My mum and grandmother visited and I took my grandmother to the village she was brought up in. They hadn’t been back since they were forced out of the country – it was a very special moment.

From Uganda, I returned to the UK and worked in counterterrorism roles, before being posted to Malaysia. This was the time of the MH370 and MH17 tragedies and my role was to report on what was happening and, in the case of MH17, provide consular support to the families who were affected.

It was also a time when the UK Government was keen to build closer relationships with Southeast Asia. The then-Prime Minister, David Cameron, came to Malaysia twice and I helped with his visit. But the standout moment was working on the royal visit of the (then) Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate. They came for a four-day visit and I organised their programme, which was a most magical experience. I’ve since met HM King Charles III when I was appointed High Commissioner to Singapore.  This was a huge highlight of my career.

I’ve been the British High Commissioner to Singapore since July 2024, and have already enjoyed one of the top moments of my career. 2025 marks 60 years of diplomatic relations between the UK and Singapore, so to celebrate the ties between our countries, in March 2025 we held a magical concert at the Singapore Botanic Gardens with Welsh opera superstar Katherine Jenkins. More than 7,000 people attended the event – it’s the second biggest event that’s taken place in the gardens – and its impact on the UK’s soft power in Singapore was enormous.

Smiling every day

I'm hugely proud to be a UCL alumnus and I take every opportunity to mention it. It's fantastic to see the reach that UCL has around the world, including in Singapore. I meet people all the time who know about UCL, have friends who have gone there, or have been there themselves. The UK’s higher education sector remains highly regarded.  Half of the Singaporean Cabinet was educated there.

There's not a lot of call for chemistry in a diplomatic career, but it taught me about synthesising complex information, about reasoning and about setting out arguments in a logical fashion. And UCL’s history of inclusivity – including being the first British university to admit women on equal terms to men – is something to be really proud of.