Susan Sim
Vice President for Asia
Susan Sim is a Vice President for Asia of The Soufan Group. Ms. Sim has extensive experience in law enforcement, intelligence analysis, journalism, and diplomacy. Currently an Adjunct Lecturer and consultant with the Home Team Academy of the Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore, she is also Chairman of the Research Committee of the National Crime Prevention Council of Singapore. In 2009, she founded Strategic Nexus Consultancy, a boutique research firm specializing in home front security and counterterrorism issues.
Ms. Sim started her career as an Inspector in the Singapore Police Force. She subsequently became a senior intelligence analyst with the Internal Security Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Singapore, where she headed the counterterrorism and counterespionage research units.
She joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2002, where she was the Senior Deputy Director in charge of the Indonesia Desk. She then took up the post as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Singapore Embassy in Washington, DC, from July 2003 to July 2006. After that she spent a year as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Ms. Sim joined the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, as a Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) in 2008 and later the same year, as the coordinator of the Civil and Internal Conflict Programme at RSIS. She expanded the ambit of the program to include research into radicalization processes in cyberspace, in conflict zones and through migration networks and prison communities. She edited a quarterly report on the Jihadist Web as well as the Afghanistan Update and the RSIS Policy Backgrounder for the policy and intelligence community in Singapore.
At the Home Team Academy, Ms. Sim is Consulting Editor to the Home Team Journal and teaches at the Senior Command and Staff Course. She also teaches at the NATO Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism in Ankara, Turkey and has taught at the regional combating terrorism seminar organised by the United States Joint Special Operations University. She has also organised and conducted training programmes for the Singapore military.
During an award-winning career in journalism, Ms. Sim was the Indonesia Bureau Chief of The Straits Times in Jakarta from 1996 to 2001, where she covered the fall of Suharto and the emerging political landscape.
Ms. Sim graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Honors degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University, United Kingdom, in 1986. A master of arts (Oxon) was conferred in 1992. She also studied at the New York University on a Fulbright award in 1993-4, and was an Institute Associate at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University in June 2003.