Gaurav Keerthi

Gaurav Keerthi (born 2 April 1979, in India) is a Brigadier General in the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF)[1] who is also a TV personality and author in Singapore and is the founder of dialectic.sg, an online commenting platform based in Singapore.

Keerthi during the recording of a Channel NewsAsia programme at MediaCorp in December 2014

In 2008, Gaurav served as one of the permanent judges on Season 2 of the International Emmy Award-nominated TV show The Arena, which was broadcast on Mediacorp Channel 5. He also appeared as a guest judge for one of the semi-finals of Season 1 of the show in 2007. In 2012, he served as the host and moderator for Season 2 of the debate show Bridging Asia: The Singapore Debates, broadcast on Channel NewsAsia.[2]

Gaurav served as the President of Debate Association Singapore from 2006 to 2010, having previously served as the organisation's Vice-President from 2005 to 2006. In 2011, he published a book about debating entitled Think, Speak, Win: Discover the Art of Debate (ISBN 978-981-4328-84-5).[3] The book included a foreword written by Singapore's then-Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan (who himself is a former competitive debater).

Gaurav was born in India, and grew up in Nigeria and Germany, before his family moved to Singapore when he was aged ten. He later took up Singapore citizenship. He was educated St. Andrews Secondary School before studying at Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College in Singapore, before going on to Stanford University in the United States where he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics on a Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship.[4] After returning to Singapore, he became a helicopter pilot in the RSAF.[5] He subsequently completed a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2014.[6]

As of 2019, Gaurav has founded a community called better.sg, a non-profit targeted at bringing together busy talents from both technical and non-technical backgrounds to build innovative digital tools to address societal problems. Gaurav acts as the CEO for this organization.

References
  1. Ganesan, Deepanraj (2018-06-29). "Defence chief heads SAF promotion list". The Straits Times. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
  2. Bridging Asia back for second season in October Archived 2012-10-03 at the Wayback Machine, channelnewsasia.com, 1 October 2012
  3. Think, Speak, Win Archived 2011-08-21 at the Wayback Machine, marshallcavendish.com, retrieved 3 October 2012
  4. "BrightSparks E-magazine". brightsparks.com.sg. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
  5. Uniquely Singaporean, CyberPioneer, 12 August 2005
  6. "The HKS Citizen", 25 November 2013
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