specialist who has spent over a decade in various media-related roles. This brings together his extensive journalism experience with his passion for, and academic interest in, digital culture and social media, both of which have earned him and teams he has lead accolades and recognition both locally and internationally.
Niki is known by the moniker The Bangsar Boy, a reference to his fortnightly column in The Star. He is often also sought after for his social commentary and opinions on social media sentiments by media organisations and has been featured on BBC, Al Jazeera, MTV Asia, Astro Awani, NTV7, BFM and The Star, among others.
Since his return from London in 2013, Niki has worked on several projects aimed at spreading positivity and unity in Malaysia. These include co-organising projects such as #SayaMahuPicnic with arts collective RandomAlphabets and #Fast4Malaysia with Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir and Projek Dialog.
He was also the person behind 50x50 My Malaysia, a story-collecting arts project to commemorate the 50 th Malaysia Day last year, which saw him visiting 13 states in 15 days to collect 50 Malaysian stories. In 2014, to commemorate 57 years since, Niki lead a collaborative content-driven interactive installation project aimed at getting Malaysians to reflect on their current lives in the context of their personal history called LimaPuluhTujuh.
In his spare time, Niki contributes to various charitable causes, specifically HIV/AIDS and cancer awareness. He is also part of the team that brought Twestival, a global fundraising movement to Malaysia in 2009, which has raised tens of thousands of Ringgit for youth homes in Malaysia. Since 2010, he has served the Twestival Global team as Regional Coordinator for Asia and in 2013, took on a role in the movements editorial team.
Early in 2014, Niki was commissioned for the DPAC Arts Festival to conceptualise Strait(s) Ahead, a Baba and Nyonya-themed exhibition featuring the works of young artists reimagining traditional artifacts through contemporary lenses.
Following the completion of his MA in Digital Culture and Society funded by the British Chevening Scholarship programme in 2012, and after a successful career in journalism from a young age, Nikis current work focuses on cross-platform media strategy and digital/social content.
Currently, Niki splits his time between consulting for various organisations including UNAIDS, Tesco Malaysia, Miss Universe Malaysia Organisation among others and writing for a variety of magazines including Going Places and Esquire Malaysia. Niki also lectures at KDU University College in the areas of news writing, creative industries and digital media.
As a prolific user of social media, Niki has a keen personal and academic interest in digital culture and have given talks and presentations are conferences on social media, digital culture and journalism including the Asian Social Media and Bloggers Conference as well as Big Data Week KL.
Before moving to London in 2011 to read for this MA, Niki was based in Singapore as part of the Asia Journalism Fellowship at Nanyang Technological University researching into social medias impact on news related to the Malaysian political landscape. At Kings College London where he recently graduated with distinction, his dissertation focused on information flow and trust on social networking site Twitter.
Until his departure, Niki was editor of R.AGE, the youth platform for Malaysias largest English daily, The Star. He joined the newspaper in 2005 after several years editing magazines to conceptualise and manage R.AGE, leading the team to win several awards including the Red Ribbon Award and the Asian Digital Media Awards.
While at The Star, Niki was also involved in the execution of several of its social media projects including live chats with renowned personalities, live tweeting from events and the papers iPad edition. He also ran and facilitated the papers long- standing young journalist programme BRATs which and equips teenagers with skills and knowledge to produce content for print and online, including video production and social media.
In 2009, Niki was named one of August Man magazines Men of the Year and Martell VSOP Media Personality of the year. A year later, he was named M2 Magazines Leading Men of 2010.