STUDENT. FOUNDER. DRIVEN BY ONE QUESTION.
A student at our partner school once delivered a one-minute presentation in front of their peers. Months of preparation had gone into that moment. That moment has stayed with me. Not because it was surprising that this student could do it. Because the world had spent years assuming they could not. Students who learn and process differently are rarely given structured opportunities to find their voice, and that assumption quietly closes doors.
From that moment, one question took over. I am Jerome Ong, an 18-year-old from Singapore, and I have spent the last few years trying to answer it: why is the ability to communicate clearly and confidently not equally available to everyone, and what follows from that? The answer keeps showing up wherever I look. In classrooms, community centres, government offices, and across borders. The gap between what people are entitled to and what they can actually access is rarely about policy or resources. It is almost always about communication. About being able to articulate a need, navigate a system, or make yourself heard in a room that was not designed with you in mind.
The Unspoken Policy is my attempt to do something about that. Through advocacy, service, and writing. And the conviction that communication should never be the thing that holds someone back.
INTERNSHIPS
I went into each of them expecting to learn about business. What I kept finding instead was policy, just wearing a different suit. Underneath the business problem, there was usually a policy question that was not part of the conversation. That gap stayed with me.
WestCap, New York — Private Equity (December 2024)
My time at WestCap covered remote research and a visit to the New York office. The remote work involved consolidating diligence and contributing to an expert call. It was structured enough that I could follow along and contribute meaningfully. The office visit was something else entirely. Moving through a schedule of meetings with people at every level of the firm, I was mostly listening and trying to keep up.
What I took away was simpler than I expected: that investment decisions involve a lot of human judgement about credibility and risk, and that those judgements are harder to model than the numbers suggest. That was not what I had expected finance to look like.
Allen & Gledhill LLP, Singapore —M&A Law (January 2025)
Law from the outside looks like outcomes. From the inside, at least in M&A, it is almost entirely about language. My first placement at Allen & Gledhill was in the Corporate M&A department. The work spanned five live projects and covered two distinct tasks. On the proofreading side: shareholders' agreements, share purchase agreements, due diligence reports, and scheme of arrangement documents. On the drafting side: affidavits and originating applications. I sat in on meetings with partners and senior associates working directly with clients.
What surprised me most was the precision the work demanded. Every clause, every definition, every cross-reference had to hold up under scrutiny. I had never encountered writing where a single word carried that much weight. What I kept wondering was why each clause existed at all, what dispute or loophole it had been written to address. That question turned out to be more interesting than the documents themselves.
Bain & Company, Singapore — Management Consulting (June 2025)
At Bain I worked in a supporting capacity on a live deal, completing tasks centred around value-capture optimisation and taking meeting notes during client sessions with partners and associates.The thing that stayed with me was how methodically the problem was approached. Every question had a structure. Every assumption was made explicit before it was tested. What I had not appreciated before was how much of a business challenge is really a sequencing problem: figuring out which question to answer first so that everything else becomes clearer. Sitting in the room while that process unfolded, even as the most junior person there, was different from anything I had encountered in a classroom. The discipline of making every assumption explicit before acting on it was the most transferable takeaway.
Allen & Gledhill LLP, Singapore — M&A and Litigation (November–December 2025)
Coming back to Allen & Gledhill the second time, I was placed across both M&A and Litigation, working on eight live projects. The biggest shift from my first stint was in how I approached the documents. The first time I read for content, focusing on what each clause said. The second time I read for intention, asking what each clause was designed to prevent and why it had been written that way. Attending the Supreme Court hearing on 4 December and taking notes in real time made that question concrete. The arguments being made in court were grounded in policy choices embedded in legislation years before anyone anticipated these exact circumstances. Legislation sets the rules. Litigation reveals its edges.
That gap between what the law says and why it was written that way is what The Unspoken Policy is really trying to teach. Rules can be memorised. Intentions have to be understood. And it is only when you understand the intention that you can question whether the rule is still serving it, which is where any meaningful engagement with policy actually starts.
AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIP
These awards were given for character and leadership, not just academic performance. That distinction matters to me more than the titles do.
Lee Hah Ing Scholarship 2024
The Lee Hah Ing Scholarship is awarded annually to a small number of students at ACS who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement, exemplary character, and meaningful contributions to school and community. It recognises character and leadership, not just academic performance. Receiving it meant that the way I had chosen to engage with school and community had been worth something beyond grades.
MOE Character and Leadership Awards
MOE Edusave Character Award (ECHA) (2023, 2024, 2025): Awarded for exemplary character, integrity, and leadership qualities.
MOE Edusave Award for Achievement, Good Leadership, and Service (EAGLES) (2022, 2024): Awarded for contributions to school and community initiatives, exemplifying leadership and social responsibility.
What connects these awards is not a single achievement but a sustained way of showing up over time. Showing up consistently, for the right reasons and without an audience, is what they recognised.
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Language is the most direct path to understanding a culture. Across three languages, I engage not just in words — but in the values, histories, and worldviews they carry.
CHINESE — MASTERY & COURSEWORK
Growing up in Singapore, Mandarin Chinese has always been more than an academic subject — it is a living language woven into the fabric of daily life, community, and heritage. I have pursued mastery of the language with the same rigour I apply to every intellectual endeavour, culminating in a GCE O-Level Chinese A1 and a Distinction in Oral Chinese.
My command of the language extends beyond grammar and vocabulary. The two coursework videos below, produced entirely in Mandarin, reflect my ability to communicate with fluency, precision, and cultural sensitivity. The Shanghai Humanities Overseas Cultural Programme (2025) further deepened this engagement, immersing me in Mainland Chinese society, contemporary discourse, and lived culture.
For me, Chinese proficiency is not merely a credential — it is a bridge to the 1.4 billion voices that shape a significant portion of our world's thought, commerce, and culture.
新加坡必游景点
Top Attractions to Explore in Singapore
发现娘惹文化的丰富遗产
Discovering the Rich Heritage of Peranakan Culture
SPANISH — AN ONGOING JOURNEY
Committed to becoming trilingual, I am on a structured journey in Spanish: having passed DELE A1 (Instituto Cervantes) and now sitting DELE A2 in May 2026. Spanish is not merely a third language; it is a gateway to Latin American political thought, Iberian literature, and the lived realities of the world’s second-largest native-speaking community. As I deepen my linguistic foundation, I am simultaneously engaging with the cultural and intellectual traditions the language carries.
COMMUNICATION IN PRACTICE
Debate, MUN, and public speaking are where the ideas get tested. Not in theory but in real time, in front of people who disagree with you. What follows is a selection of the competitions and sessions that have genuinely changed how I argue, listen, and adapt.
Award Highlights
COMPETITIVE DEBATE
Thoburn Cup 2022 — Champion + 1st Best Speaker
Secondary Schools Debating Championships 2024 — Plate Champions + Best Speaker
Debatable Open 2025 — 1st Runner Up + 5th Best Speaker
MOE-ACJC Intercollegiate Debating Championship (MIDC) 2025 — 1st Runner Up + 7th Best Speaker
MODEL UNITED NATIONS
Yale Model United Nations Singapore — Best Delegate (2024, 2025, 2026)
Singapore Model United Nations Conference 2024 — Discretionary Best Delegate + Best Position Paper
International Model United Nations Conference 2025 — Head Chair
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Orators' Trophy 2022 — 2nd Runner Up (National Competition)
John Locke Institute PPE Summer School 2025 — Best Speaker, Ideological Turing Test
Watch Spotlight Moments
MIDC 2025 - Moments from across the rounds
Winning speech at the Ideological Turing Test - John Locke Institute PPE 2025.
Emceeing ACSI Founder's Day 2025
Representing Switzerland at YMUN 2026 in the CSTD, debating the impact of AI in education.
Words in Action
The results are on record. What they do not show is what the practice built: the ability to hold a position under pressure, listen to a counterargument, and adjust without losing the thread. That transfers to everything else on this site more directly than any trophy does.
THE EXPERIENCES THAT STAYED
Not every formative experience happens in a classroom. These span academic programmes, professional settings, and cross-cultural immersion. Each one changed how I think, asked harder questions, and left me seeing things differently than before.
WHAT I AM BUILDING TOWARD
I do not have a five-year plan. But I know the direction. Project Flare is expanding into Indonesia. Project Reperio continues every week across the border in Malaysia. The research on misinformation is now published in an international journal and presented at an international academic conference. The geography keeps widening. So does the question. What would it actually take to build communication capacity not just in one classroom, but across a region? Not as a volunteer initiative, but as something that lasts? I do not have the full answer yet. But the direction is clear, and I know that finding it properly will require an education that takes the world seriously, not just one country at a time.