THE TEAM

The Kiwanis Malaysia Academy (KMA) Committee was brought together by Dato’ Fatimah Saad and comprises Kiwanians from diverse backgrounds, government sector to commercial sector; educators & trainers to accountants. All have the common objective to empower Kiwanians to better serve the communities and the children via KMA. The members of KMA are as follows:

Dato’ Fatimah Saad

Dato’ Fatimah Saad served in Qatar Foundation from 2006-2013 as the Director of Implementation and Social Outreach Division of the Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development (DIIFSD), Qatar. Her work involves developing innovative evidenced- based family related programs and activities for the public and service personnel such as social workers, health personnel and teachers. The division’s focus is to help promote strong and healthy families consistent with the call of actions as stipulated under the Doha Declaration. The Doha Declaration reaffirms that the family is the natural and fundamental group of society, as declared in article 16 (3) of the Universal Declaration of human Rights.

Dato’ Fatimah served the Malaysian government for 30 years before joining Qatar Foundation in late 2006. Her last post in Malaysia was as the Director General of the National Population and Family Development Board. Her responsibilities as the DG were mainly to plan, direct, organize and develop policies and programs in three focus areas i.e. family development, population research and reproductive health.

She represented Malaysia at the UN Commission for Population and Development (UNCPD) from 2000 to 2006. She had also actively participated as Malaysian representative at many high-level meetings at international and regional levels.

Dato’ Fatimah received her first degree in Humanities at the University of Science Malaysia in 1976 and Masters in Public Administration at the University of Southern California, USA in 1983.

She founded the Kiwanis Club of Taman Tun Dr Ismail and have been a member since 1993. She was the Governor of Kiwanis Malaysia District for the term 2015/16.

Ivan Oh

Ivan is a Chartered Accountant and is a member of Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) and Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA). He has been an accountant for 35 years todate.

He started his career with an accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1985. He worked for 14 years in the assurance and financial advisory services, covering audit assignments and corporate and financial restructuring projects.

He made the move into the commercial sector by accepting a one-year stint in Ecuador with an energy generating company. Upon his return, Ivan went into the telecommunications & technology industry which included a fixed & mobile operator, a satellite operator & software developer for 18 years.

Although Ivan joined Kiwanis in 2002 but only in the recent 5 years that he focused on serving at the Dsitrict level. It started in 2015 when Dato’ Fatimah persuaded him to join the District Board as the Treasurer. Since then there is no turning back as Ivan served 2 terms as the Treasurer, following that as Governor Elect in 2017/18 and then District Governor of Malaysia District for the term 2018/19 where he achieved the Kiwanis International Distinguished Service Award. Subsequently, as they say – there’s no retirement from Kiwanis, he continued to serve in the KM Board of Trustees and as member of various committees including KMA, Growth & Kiwanis 4.0.

During his tenure at District level, Ivan has travelled nationwide to visit as many Kiwanis clubs and permanent centers to build relationships & learn. He is passionate about connecting the kiwanians and in communities building for the benefit of the children. As such he continues to serve in the various capacities.

Rosemary Tan

Her passion is to help others discover their potential; as trainer, coach and mentor. She believes that empowering entrepreneurs, and community leaders will bring about ripples of transformational change.

She has 18 years of experience developing entrepreneurial leaders to build trust and thrive in safe environments that facilitates accelerated growth and learning. She also facilitates family business conversations and transitions. She works with business owners in Asia, Africa,Pakistan, and Nepal.

Rosemary herself is an entrepreneur and a property developer. She serves the family business; Tungling Group as their Creative Director. She is a volunteer leader; the former Global Chairperson for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) 2013/14, and the current Service Chair for Kiwanis Malaysia. Certified Forum and Moderator trainer for EO since 2001, and a John Maxwell Coach. She also serves as a board member for Kirirom Institute of Technology in Cambodia and Affiliate Consultant, for Authentic Business Group CIC based in UK.

Prof. Abtar Kaur

Abtar has 36 years of teaching experience. She has incorporated many varied instructional design principles in her teaching and learning activities especially after obtaining MS in Instructional Design from Syracuse University in 1986 and PhD in Web-based Learning, from the University of Malaya in 2001 and a post-doctoral at Indiana University in 2000/2001. In 1996 Abtar joined the Faculty of Education, University of Malaya and in 2002, she was offered to take up the Directorship for the Centre for Instructional Design and Technology (CIDT) at Open University Malaysia (OUM). From 2014,-2019 Abtar worked in Dubai as Dean, School of E-Education, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University ( HBMSU).

Abtar has been involved in many national and international projects related to multimedia design and development, e-learning, online learning, and mobile learning. Some significant awards she won are the Fulbright Scholarship, an award for Best Open Distance Learning Resources from the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Vancouver, Canada, Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Technology award from the 18th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, Florida. Abtar wrote the winning submission (Gold) for HBMSU for the QS Stars Reimagine Education Awards 2016 for Middle-East Category, awarded by Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. In 2019 Abtar was nominated to be an International Advisory Board member for Educational Technology for Higher Education Journal.

Abtar was one of the consultants in assisting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia set up the National E-Learning Centre. She has also been involved in instructional design projects in Indonesia (auspices of World Bank) and IDRC (International Development and Research Center) based in Toronto. Her other projects were with Telecentre.org Foundation, based in Manila, and UNDP where she trained Maldivian civil servants in e – learning practices.

Her personal mission in life would be to continuously inspire thinking and innovation.

Fatimah Abu Bakar (FAB)

Fatimah Abu Bakar graduated in Linguistics from Toronto and in Education from Birmingham. As an educationist in communication and leadership for the last thirty-over years, she uses her rich experiences in nurturing leaders from diverse backgrounds. When she was a Head of Department for the Centre for Languages for various universities, she was appointed a panel member on the recruitment board for selection and promotion.

FAB (as better known amongst friends) was instrumental in setting up the Clinical School of the International Medical University in Seremban which is adjacent to the Seremban Hospital. She was the Senior Administrator for the IMU Clinical School which she was also responsible in the recruitment and promotion of staff throughout her tenure in this esteemed outfit.

In 2009, FAB was been invited to join the PETRONAS Leadership Centre where she has kept a steep learning curve in the areas of leadership, coaching, talent acquisition, talent Management and employee performance management. She was involved in strategic planning and work-outs to produce the Key Performance Indicators for the Centre. FAB is also a certified leadership coach and a certified trainer for Crucial Conversation and leadership programs.

Her passion includes designing motivation and leadership camps for school and university students, travel to explore leadership games and programs in other countries and writing her vignettes of her childhood and teaching experiences in many places she has had the pleasure to contribute.

Currently FAB is the CEO of Celebrating Thinkers Sdn Bhd; a leadership and coaching training company based in Bangi. She aspires to develop more leaders for our beloved nation through nurturing and nourishing leadership experiential learning methodology as well as building a tri-partied ownership in learning and development in any high performing organizations. The synergistic relationship among superiors, learners and Celebrating Thinkers’ facilitators and coaches would a learner’s potentials and strengths could be unleashed and leveraged on to help him achieve more and do more for himself, his family, his community and his nation through his commitment to his organization he works for.

Desiree Kaur

Desiree Kaur began her autism advocacy initiative in 2019 when she organized an event called Project Haans for Autism Awareness. The event was well-attended garnering news articles in local newspapers and online portals. Since then, Project Haans’ social media sites were maintained until a website was launched on 27 July 2021.

Her passion to advocate all abilities was ignited in 2017, when Desiree’s son Haans was diagnosed with autism. Desiree could not accept the challenge and difficulty in obtaining information to help her and her child. Hence, she decided to empower herself with knowledge. She found the most useful information from people on similar journeys be it fellow parents / caregivers or practitioners.

In 2021, Desiree completed her Master in Education (Special Education). Desiree has also attended many trainings such as the SonRise StartUp, Hanen More Than Words, Interoception by Dr Kelly Mahler and many more. She continues to keep herself updated on the latest approaches for autism.

Desiree also speaks publicly about her experiences as a mother and advocate. She’s done interviews with media outlets, writes articles for her own website and other news outlets, conducts trainings, talks and workshops for parents and teachers. She believes that her background in Public Relations and Communications has really given her the foundation to do the advocacy work she does now. Her experience in PR spanned over 8-years in notable PR agencies such as Fleishman-Hillard, Webber Shandwick and Ogilvy PR. She’s also worked in non-client based settings such as Resorts World Berhad and HSBC Malaysia.

Desiree is currently the President for the Kiwanis Club of TTDI and is a Subject Matter Expert for Kiwanis Malaysia Academy (KMA). She also runs a tuition centre, Adells Learning Centre for the past 10-years. Adells Learning Centre has long advocated a learner centered approach to teaching all children. In addition to this, she also writes academic English language workbooks for a local book publisher.

Rani Wemel

Global Pioneer in Mobile Learning & Learning Experience Portals (LXP), Co-Founder and COO @ LTT Global and MyMobileUniversity

Rani Wemel, a law lecturer resigned in 2000 founded LTT Global from her dining table with a vision to make learning accessible and affordable. She has been creating awareness through various joint activities together with the public, private and academic sectors to encourage and promote human capital development through lifelong learning. She is a proud finalist in the “teleworking mums” in 2004 and a Nominee for the Prime Minister’s Woman Entrepreneur 2011 Award and Woman Social Activist 2011 Award. In 2016 she received the Women Excellence Awards under the category of Women Entrepreneur in Education (Mobile Learning) Award held in conjunction with International Women’s Day Commemoration, in Sri Lanka. In 2018, she was the Recipient of Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur Award at the 5th National Women’s Day Awards organized by the National Foundation for Entrepreneurship Development (NFED), Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.

She is a Graduate of Cherie Blair Foundation, UK for her MyMobileUniversity global initiative to impact lives through education. She serves as Honorary Advisor, Speaker, Panelist, Advisor and Mentor for global companies and co-Founder of 2 Special Interest Groups driving Mobile Learning and Mobilepreneurs.