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[SINGAPORE] Workers’ Party (WP) newcomer Kenneth Tiong never imagined that he would be preparing to make his political debut.

“To be honest, I’ve never thought of myself as a political person,” the 36-year-old told The Business Times in a recent interview.

“I used to have things like a food blog where I would make fairly snarky comments. That is not what (an aspiring) politician would do,” he quipped.

But two years ago, he met the party’s Members of Parliament (MPs) Jamus Lim and Gerald Giam at a policy forum – and his interest in politics was piqued.

“I started learning a bit more about… how the policy research process works, how they form parliamentary questions, how they come up with their speech points, how these are talked over with the entire party,” said Tiong. “For me, this was very interesting.”

He started volunteering for the WP that year, going on house visits in East Coast and Aljunied and helping out at Meet-the-People sessions. He became an official party member in October 2023.

In 2024, he became a legislative assistant to Leader of the Opposition and party chief Pritam Singh.

But it was his work with Aljunied GRC MPs Giam and Sylvia Lim – helping residents petition government agencies – that solidified his conviction to enter politics.

“That was a big part of what made me think that this was something I wanted to pursue further.”

From Ivy League to AI

Tiong’s resume features top educational institutes and in-demand professions, leading up to his current role as a director of tech startup Sensemake AI.

The Raffles Institution alumnus went on to Brown University, where he majored in applied mathematics, computer science and philosophy.

After graduation, he began a career in finance, as a quantitative analyst in investment firms Millennium Management and Brahman Capital Management.

Then, seeing that artificial intelligence was “one of several technologies which will change the future”, he made a career switch to tech. “I wanted to get hands-on experience building products and sort of understand what AI can do.”

On Thursday (Apr 17), Tiong was officially introduced as part of the WP’s team for Aljunied GRC, where he has been walking the ground in the Serangoon division vacated by former MP Leon Perera.

“A lot of people understand that the party had to do what it had to do,” said Tiong, referring to Perera’s resignation after his affair with fellow member Nicole Seah was made public.

“I think the reception has been positive. (The residents) don’t feel like they have been neglected. So if selected for this area by the party, I hope (the residents) will continue to give us their fullest support.”

In the 2020 election, the WP’s Aljunied GRC team – led by Singh, with party chair Lim, Faisal Manap, Giam and Perera – won 59.95 per cent of the votes, improving on the party’s victories there in GE 2011 and GE 2015.

This year, the WP faces a People’s Action Party (PAP) team comprising newcomers Jagathishwaran Rajo, Daniel Liu, Adrian Ang and Faisal Abdul Aziz, as well as Chan Hui Yuh, who ran there in GE 2020 too.

Fresh ideas

Offering fresh ideas to tackle some of Singapore’s challenges is Tiong’s chief motivation in entering politics.

“When I look at some of the problems of our society – whether economically related, or in terms of social safety nets, or family formation… I think our society can be much better if we made a different set of policy choices.”

He suggested reforms in the areas of research and development, startup funding and enterprise development.

In research and development, Singapore should set “national missions”, said Tiong. He noted that despite billions invested over the years, Singapore has not created deep tech companies, nor have its startups gone for initial public offerings (IPOs).

He compared this state of affairs to that in Denmark – also a small country – which has produced Novo Nordisk, the company behind groundbreaking diabetes drug Ozempic.

One issue, he said, is the “instant monetary mentality” of Singapore’s research ecosystem, where priorities change with the trends.

“Suddenly, AI is hot, so we’ll hop onto AI. Suddenly biotech is hot, so we’ll hop on bio. Then quantum is hot, so we’ll hop on quantum.”

He feels that scientists should instead be given more authority to determine their research directions. “We need to give a lot more leeway to scientists to lead these things, because a lot of this innovation comes from the bottom up.”

Speaking up

For Singapore’s startups, he called for more risk capital. “A lot of startups here are entering the ‘Valley of Death’, and they’re not coming out – the Valley of Death being Series A to Series B.”

Given Singapore’s growing status as a wealth management hub, more can be done to get single-family offices and high-net-worth individuals to put funds into risk capital for local startups, he argued.

Tiong called for more centralised efforts to identify promising, competitive and technology-forward companies, and help them get through the “substantial growth stages” and develop them to eventually make it to IPO.

“It’s not enough for us to have a number of small-sized startups,” he said. “It requires making hard choices about which startups die or survive, in order that some may survive and thrive.”

Separately, as a father of a four-year-old and a newborn – Tiong wants to advocate for young families, from housing affordability to education stress.

He also wants to speak up for Singaporeans who cannot get long-term visit passes or permanent residency for their foreign spouses, calling for more transparency on why such applications are rejected.

Many such families are low-income, but do not get government support due to the spouse’s foreign status, he said.

With GE2025 happening soon after the US tariffs raised global recession fears, pundits have wondered if this will cause a “flight to safety” among voters.

To this, Tiong said: “It cannot be that in flying to safety, we are flying back to the same old answers.”

Fresh thinking is needed for the challenges ahead, he added. “It’s only through diversity of thought that we are going to get the good answers we need.”