About Me

Winston has 2 decades of experience with the Singapore Armed Forces and Civil Defence and held various command, leadership, and training positions. He was involved in many large scale national and overseas missions and on the training front, he helped modernize the SCDF firefighting, Urban Search and Rescue(USAR) and HAZMAT Operations in the Civil Defence Academy and was the first Head of the Specialist Training Wing(Firefighting, USAR, Hazmat) in the Singapore Civil Defence Academy in its inauguration in 1999 to 2005. He has served another 18 years with the UN system and was the INSARAG Unit Head and Global Lead in the OCHA’s Emergency Response Section (ERS), Response Support Branch (RSB) in the Coordination Division (CD) in Geneva, Switzerland.

His international operational experience with OCHA’s United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team include response to support government led response in the Indian Ocean Tsunami in Meulaboh (2005) and Nias (2005) and Padang (as UNDAC Team Leader in 2008) Earthquakes in Indonesia, Pakistan Kashmir Earthquake (2005), Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (2008), the Solomon Islands Tsunami (2007), Typhoon Morakot in 2009, the Nepal Gorkha Earthquake (2015), the Iraq- Iran boarder Earthquake (as UNDAC Team Leader in 2017) and Türkiye earthquake in 2023.

Winston has undergone the IFRC FACT Training and various UNDAC and EUCPT Leadership trainings.

His portfolio includes consulting closely with disaster response management authorities of national governments, regional organizations, NGOs and a wide range of relevant humanitarian network partners such as the WHO-EMTs – on disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels, and in accordance to the UN General Assembly (GA) Resolution 57/150 on Strengthening the coordination and effectiveness of international urban search and rescue assistance and INSARAG Guidelines and Methodology.

Winston has managed the globally recognised INSARAG External Classification (IEC) system with 58 global teams classified to date. His advocates for humanitarian action and especially strong localisation by supporting disaster prone countries in strengthening their disaster management systems and encouraging international humanitarian assistance to respond with flexibility to extreme hydrometeorological sudden onsets. Winston is a Singaporean with a background in Health and Safety and Fire Engineering.