Prior to setting up SW Singapore and Malaysia, he also spent two years in total at global pulp and paper giant Asia Pulp and Paper in a regional role and at the Singapore Sports Hub in a senior role.

His previous appointments include helming the Singapore Environment Council as its Chief Executive Officer and Press Secretary to Dr Vivian Balakrishnan at the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

Jose was also the Deputy Director of Media Relations and Social Media at the Singapore Sports Council (now Sport Singapore) from 2007 to 2011. During his time at SSC, he was appointed the Head of Communications and IT of the 1st Asian Youth Games Singapore 2009. He was credited for formulating the media and broadcast strategy for the inaugural Games, and also co-wrote the theme song for the 1st Asian Youth Games Singapore 2009.

Other roles he undertook while at the SSC was Press Secretary to Youth Olympic Games Village Mayor Teo Ser Luck during the 2010 Youth Olympic Games, and was Media Attache to Singapore National Olympic Council President Teo Chee Hean at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou.

Prior to public service, Jose was a senior correspondent with the Straits Times and Mediacorp. He was honoured as Mediacorp’s Journalist of the Year in 2006 and also picked up the TODAY Story of the Year in 2007. In 2005, he was the Singapore S-League’s Story of the Year winner.

Prior to his appointment at SW, Saravanan was a Senior Consultant at Portland, overseeing the global data management of the Soft Power 30 index as well as being the Research Lead for the Singapore and APAC division of the firm. During his tenure with Portland, he advised on US-China trade developments for the US Embassy and developed a digital communications network for the Singapore inter-faith scene to deploy during peace and crisis scenarios.

Saravanan has completed his second Masters in Public Policy (MPP) from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (Li Ka-Shing Scholar) majoring in Economic Policy Analysis. While completing his MPP, Saravanan built and led consultancy teams to study ASEAN smart city initiatives with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) while also developing a bespoke public expenditure framework for the Mayor’s Office within the City of Ulaanbaatar.

He was also invited to present his research papers at Columbia SIPA (GPPN 2018) in New York and at the Second Asia-Pacific Research Conference on Multidisciplinary Research (2017) in Sri Lanka. Saravanan was also awarded the prestigious Raffles Fellowship at the Raffles Dialogue in 2017.

Saravanan has completed an MA in International Journalism at City University London and has also received a Post-Graduate Diploma in European Politics (GEJI scholarship) from Denmark as well as a BA in Journalism and Communications from Monash University (Australia).

As part of his professional development, Saravanan has tenured with Al Jazeera, Royal United Services Institute, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation and The Economist Intelligence Unit.