Denise Phua

Denise Phua Lay Peng (born 9 December 1959) is a Singaporean politician who has been serving as Mayor of Central Singapore District since 2014. A member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), she has been the Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Kampong Glam division of Jalan Besar GRC since 2015.

Prior to entering politics, she is a full-time special needs volunteer after working in the private sector for two decades. She became the president of the Autism Resource Centre and co-founded Pathlight School.

As an MP, she has focused on developing programmes for disabled people and special needs communities in Singapore. She is a member of both the Government Parliamentary Committees (GPC) for Education and Social and Family Development.

Early life and career Phua attended Balestier Girls' Primary School, Raffles Girls' School and Hwa Chong Junior College

In a career spanning two decades, she held management positions at Hewlett-Packard and the Wuthelam Group. She then founded a regional leadership training firm, the Centre of Effective Leadership. As Phua consulted professionals and did research on how to help him, She subsequently founded WeCAN, a charity which helps caregivers of autistic people and offers early intervention programmes for autistic preschoolers.

In 2005, Phua left the corporate world to be a full-time special needs volunteer. She often wrote to newspapers and government agencies on issues affecting the special needs community. She is one of the key architects behind three 5-year Enabling Masterplans for the Disabled in Singapore.

Phua is also the co-founder and former acting principal A believer in helping autistic people realise their potential and integrate into society, Phua helped develop many of the school's programmes. These include employability skills training through a student-run café, specialised vocational training, and the school attracted media attention for its impact on students. During the election campaign, she promised to make Singapore a more inclusive society by representing disabled people and special needs communities. The PAP team won Jalan Besar GRC with 69.26% of the vote. Phua also led a committee that drew up a five-year plan to improve services for special needs children. The PAP studied their proposals and later implemented some, such as a National non-profit Special Needs Trust Fund. Laws were also drafted to prohibit abuse of mentally disabled people and to allow parents to appoint someone to look after their disabled children after they die.

Mayor of Central Singapore District Phua was appointed Mayor of Central Singapore District in 2014 for a three-year term, and was reappointed for the following term in 2017. As Mayor, Phua has initiated many projects to meet the needs of her residents. These include a suite of more than 50 community programmes by the Central Singapore Community Development Council to help residents live a better life, and build a do-good district. Among them are: Nurture, a 40-week programme to develop confident and self-directed learners in communications and problem solving; In Search of Purpose talk series, to spur residents on in finding their bigger purpose in life; Silver Friends, a platform to bring volunteers and partners to serve the seniors through a series of silver programmes; and The Purple Symphony, Singapore's largest inclusive orchestra comprising musicians with and without special needs.