Susan Sim

Susan Sim is a Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center. She is Vice President for Asia at The Soufan Group and has worked in various capacities in the Singapore government—in law enforcement, intelligence analysis, and diplomacy—and was a journalist based in Indonesia in the 1990s. In 2009, she founded Strategic Nexus Consultancy, a boutique research firm specializing in home-front security and counterterrorism issues, in which capacity she led several commissioned research projects studying the terrorist landscape and government responses in Southeast Asia. In December 2010 she joined The Soufan Group, combining her local knowledge with the expertise of TSG’s international team to design training programs for government clients.A graduate of the University of Oxford, she started her career in Singaporean government as a probationary police inspector. Posted to the Internal Security Department as an intelligence analyst heading the counterterrorism and counter-espionage research units, she transitioned to journalism. After a stint on the political desk of The Straits Times, she was posted to Jakarta as Indonesia Bureau Chief, where she covered the events leading to and following the fall of President Suharto.

She was then recruited by the Singapore Foreign Service and deployed to Washington, DC, as Deputy Chief of Mission. Currently Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Southeast Asia specialist for the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) Global Study on Countering Violent Extremism. She has been a speaker at the NATO Centre of Excellence—Defense Against Terrorism in Ankara, Turkey, since 2008, as well as a consultant to the Home Team Academy (Singapore).Appointed Editor of the Home Team Journal in July 2018, she is also on the Editorial Board of the international journal Police Practice & Research.She is the author of E W Barker: The People’s Minister (Straits Times Press, 2016), a biography of independent Singapore’s first law minister, which won the 2017 Singapore Book Award for Best Non-Fiction Title. Her first book, Making Singapore Safe: Thirty Years of the National Crime Prevention Council (Marshall Cavendish, 2011), was described by the Prime Minister of Singapore as “a fitting tribute to the Council’s critical role in preventing crime.”

She also conceptualized, edited, and co-wrote (with Francis Chan) the Singapore Police Force’s tribute to its pioneers, Setia dan Bakti: 50 Stories of Loyalty and Service (SPF, 2015). Her most recent book, The Ostrich, the Ah Long, the Con Woman and the Creepy Guy: The Story of Crime Prevention in Singapore (co-written with chief police psychologist Majeed Khader), was launched in July 2017 by Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam. Susan contributed to The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2018), Homeland Security and Terrorism (McGraw-Hill, 2013), Trends in Corrections: Interviews with Corrections Leaders Around the World (Taylor & Francis, 2015), Trends in Policing: Interviews with Policing Leaders Around the World (Taylor & Francis, 2016), and the Pearls in Policing 2012 report, and she has written on suicide bombing and terrorist rehabilitation for the NATO Science for Peace and Security Series. She was on the board of the National Crime Prevention Council of Singapore for nine years and in 2018 was awarded the Public Service Medal (National Day Awards) by the President of Singapore.