You might think that improv — short for improvisation — classes are just for aspiring stand-up comedians or theatre practitioners, but Lewis Liu, Chief Executive Officer of Better.sg, credits his facilitation skills to the theatre form.
In fact, he actively applies these skills in his role at Better.sg — a charity with Singapore’s largest community of technology enthusiasts and professionals aiming to make a positive change.
Throughout his career, Lewis has tapped into his facilitation skills to support large organisations in engaging stakeholders, identifying emerging trends, and shaping long-term strategies.
In the public sector, he drove futures thinking and citizen engagement efforts, while his time at Grab included discussions with policymakers and regulators to navigate the pain points of gig workers and consumers.
As with improv, good listening was the key that helped Lewis to unlock meaningful conversations, paving the way to nuanced and balanced dialogues around complex issues.
Harnessing tech for social progress
Given his passion and curiosity for the tech space, Lewis joined Better.sg as one of its first volunteers in 2020 upon discovering what the organisation was doing for social impact.
“I believe that the people in private sectors can play a bigger role in shaping a better Singapore, and I was drawn to Better.sg’s mission of using technology for social impact. Volunteering here felt like a meaningful way to contribute my skills and experience toward this cause,” Lewis said.
Better.sg was formed as a ground-up initiative in 2020, when its founders identified that tech talent and skills were lacking in the social impact sector.
Today, the organisation is powered by a community of over 2,000 volunteers — skilled professionals in product development, data science, and business consultancy — who contribute their expertise to impact-driven projects. For example, volunteers supports the digital transformation of charities and non-profits by developing digital strategy roadmaps, building automation capabilities, and creating dashboards to enhance decision-making and operational efficiency.
In Lewis’ first Better.sg project, ToBeYou, he played a major role shaping the interactive online game’s narratives by conversing with stakeholders to authentically present the lived experiences of diverse groups in Singapore.
The game allows individuals to roleplay as someone of a different race, gender or identity, in a bid to build empathy and facilitate understanding between people of different races and religions.
Bridging talent gaps in meaningful causes
Passion has fuelled numerous everyday Singaporeans, like Lewis, to drive projects for social change. Often times, however, they do not have the full range of capabilities or technical know-how to scale it for greater adoption and impact.
Seeing Better.sg’s potential to ‘drive real impact’ despite humble beginnings as a ground-up initiative, Lewis felt compelled to help scale the movement by stepping up to the CEO role. With that, he is now on a mission to further bridge the skills gap by connecting Better.sg’s vast volunteer base, skilled in diverse areas — from technical competencies to business acumen — to the projects that would benefit from their insights and advice.
An example would be Checkmate, a service aimed at combating misinformation online, a project that is supported by Better.sg.
With its use of an AI-empowered WhatsApp bot, suspicious text messages, images and online videos could be verified promptly, preventing cases of online harms and falsehoods.
In starting the project, founder Tan Bing Wen was able to contribute his tech skills to develop the bot’s AI-enabled functions, creating a solid foundation for the project.
“Scaling is very different from starting, it’s a lot harder,” Bing Wen commented, explaining that to lift the project off the ground for mass usage, he needed more help with UI/UX, volunteer support to administer fact-checks, as well as marketing functions.
“To be honest, [the project] wouldn’t have taken off without the volunteers,” said Bing Wen.
With Better.sg, ground-up initiatives such as Bing Wen’s have been able to tap on a reserve of volunteers to channel their unique strengths into areas such as coding, product design, user research, marketing, and more.
“Having [worked] in big organisations, and in the government, it has taught me the value of building organisations that last beyond yourself,” Lewis shares.
What that means for him and the myriads of purpose-driven projects he supports is building the necessary processes, principles, and policies for them to be robust and sustainable for a long time, even beyond his tenure.
This article is brought to you in partnership with @singapore.
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