Melissa Kwee

Melissa Aratani Kwee is a civic leader and social entrepreneur with a long track record of strengthening community, youth leadership, and cross-sector collaboration. 

Most recently, she served as CEO of the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) which cast Singapore's City of Good vision.  The national strategy seeks to build collective conviction and the critical civic infrastructure of a giving society enabling whole-of-society partnerships, mentoring ecosystems, digital and physical community platforms for collective problem-solving across public, private, and people sectors, giving.sg and the Company of Good movement have advanced with her successors. 

She is currently a steward of her family business Pontiac Land, a Singapore-based, global real estate and hospitality player and engaged with Queenstown Kakis, advancing hyperlocal and radical social mixing through neighbourhood development adopting both ground up and policy level engagement that mobilises resident strengths, relationships, and builds shared ownership. Her work explores how hospitality,  place-making and local networks cultivate resilience, hope, and agency amid uncertainty and complexity.

Across her career, Melissa has co-founded many initiatives and organisations in the education, arts, youth and gender equity and development space, receiving many awards and accolades but she is most gratified by seeing enabled communities co-create solutions and strengthen the social fabric that underpins a resilient urban future for us all.

She was educated at Harvard College and was a Fulbright Scholar to Nepal.