K Bhavani, owner of PR training and consultancy firm, International PR Training Pte Ltd., has served in Singapore for 35 years in various appointments, including as the Director of Public Communications, Director of Corporate Communications and Press Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), Director of Emergency Preparedness and Head of the Community Engagement Cluster for Media and the Arts for MICA. She has also served as Head Public Affairs at the Ministry of Trade and Industry and later, Head of Media Relations at the Ministry of Defence, adding to her depth of experience in managing challenging issues.

In these roles, her scope of work was focused on coordinating whole-of-government communications, working closely with the other ministries and agencies. She has also handled major campaigns such as the Singapore Season in London and China and the publicity for President’s Challenge for about eight years. She was also responsible for media management for major ASEAN events, the IMF/WB meeting in Singapore and the inaugural WTO meeting.

Over the years, she was also responsible for national-level crisis communications planning, ensuring a coordinated whole-of-government approach in handling various crises scenarios. She was involved in many national level crises – the hijack of SQ117, crash of MI 185, the SARS crisis, the HINI crisis and the crisis in Singapore arising from the Fukushima nuclear incident.

Since 2012, she has worked with clients from the public and private sectors to test, validate and enhance their crisis communications plans to handle major emergencies/crises including haze, infectious diseases and terrorist attacks. More recently, she was involved in helping agencies to review their crisis communications plans in managing Covid-19.

She is also an associate trainer at the Civil Service College, Singapore Business Federation, Marketing Institute of Singapore and NTU-CCE.

Bhavani served seven years as President of the Institute of Public Relations of Singapore (IPRS). She was concurrently Chairperson of the Federation of ASEAN PR Organisations (FAPRO). She continues to serve the IPRS in her capacity as Advisor to the IPRS Accreditation Board.

Bhavani holds a degree in Business Administration (NUS), a Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK, and a Master of Arts (Mass Communications) from the Oklahoma City University, USA.

Language:

• English
• Malay
• Tamil