CIRCO Circular Design in Action

Design Director (Chemistry)

John is a master at his craft. With meticulous attention he applies his knowledge at both levels of detailed user experience design as well as on a strategic systems level.

His reasoned approach also gives him a tremendous ability to manage complex stakeholders, and help resolve conflicting challenges with deft gracefulness.

In the mental health space, John lead the team working closely with MOHT to uncover new user centric features for mindline.sg based on insights gathered from youth. Leveraging on this, he lead the facilitation of a strategic visioning workshop with stakeholders of the mental health ecosystem to arrive at systemic opportunities to transform the model of care for youth and adolescents journeys towards mental health and wellbeing.

In 2021, he was the project lead for the Founders’ Memorial, working to define a future vision of the visitor experience for a landmark memorial commemorating Singapore’s founders. The work involved integrating the expertise of a multi-disciplinary team spanning New York to Tokyo.

Previous projects include working with SAA Architects on strategic future visioning of both Woodlands Health Campus’ Experience Blueprint for both patient and staff as well as HealthCity Novena’s master plan for 2030 and beyond.

As a founding trainer for CIRCO Hub Singapore and appointed Training Associate with the Civil Service College, John has 100s of hours of training experience for both the public as well as the private sector on design and innovation. He is also a ACLP certified trainer for Adult Education.

Theresa is a design enthusiast with a passion for empowering people through thoughtful design. 

With a background in architecture, Theresa spent five years in the public service refining her skills in urban design, public policy, placemaking and stakeholder management. Notably, driven by a people-centric approach, she transformed Car-Free Sundays at Telok Ayer, quadrupling participation through stakeholder consultation workshops. She excels at balancing user and organisational needs, exemplified by her work on national-level design guidelines. For her role in innovating towards the milestone conservation of Golden Mile Complex in, Theresa earned the URA Game Changer Award in 2022.

Currently, she delivers human-centered and impact-driven projects at Chemistry, driving consultancies that balance complex stakeholder networks, regulatory considerations and business objectives. More recently, she led the consultancy for employee engagement and workplace transformation for the Ministry of National Development, and also guided key aspects of the service experience strategy of Singapore's first assisted living facility at Parry Avenue.

As a certified CIRCO trainer, Theresa has strong experience in bridging the theories of circular economy into practice with her fashion label Dear Samfu, where she makes contemporary clothing from surplus fabrics, undertaking a planet-centric approach to tackle systemic issues of fashion waste and labour exploitation.