Applause in The Grand Ballroom at The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia rivalled the roar of the F-16 fighter jets that did a flypast over the hotel on the night it welcomed Sonali Sinha – the first Indian woman President of Singapore’s oldest and largest Rotary Club.
The Rotary Club of Singapore (RCS) celebrated its 95th anniversary and installed its 91st president, Ms Sonali, and the board of directors on June 28.
RCS is not a charity but a registered society whose members raise funds internally to support its projects, Ms Sonali told tabla!.
“We give our time and energy, everything is voluntary. Nobody’s getting paid for it,” she said.
In her speech, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah, who was the event’s guest of honour, acknowledged RCS’s contributions to the nation’s early years.
She also highlighted RCS’s funding of mobile dispensaries, such as the Salvation Army Boys’ Home, the Home Nursing Foundation, and the establishment of the Singapore Anti-Tuberculosis Association.
About 450 people, including around 160 Rotarians from clubs across Asia, mainly the Philippines, India and Indonesia, attended the event.
Born in Patna, Ms Sonali lived in different parts of India due to her father’s job as a mechanical engineer for a cement company. She is the younger of two sisters, and her mother is a homemaker. In 1989, the family settled in Delhi.
Her varied experiences from living in small, rural townships to a big metropolis made her realise that the simple joys are what’s most important to her.
The 52-year-old finds joy in knowing her work has a positive social impact. She credits her parents for instilling in her a passion for community service.
Her mother was active in the township schools and ladies’ club, while her father donated to charities and helped those in need.
She studied economics at the notable Lady Shri Ram College, an all-girls’ institution in New Delhi. “We have a very active alumni community, and I see so many powerful women doing so much,” she said.
Her college years helped her become more confident and believe that women can achieve anything – a stark contrast to her MBA days, when she was a woman with no work experience among mostly male classmates from engineering backgrounds with work experience.
She moved to Mumbai in 1996 for her first job as an equity research analyst. For the next 16 years, she built a career in the aggressive, cutthroat environment of investment banking, often finding herself the only woman in the room.
Feeling unfulfilled, she took an almost 90 per cent pay cut to helm the Dignity Foundation, a non-profit organisation supporting senior citizens. It was there that she met a woman who said she could have stayed in investment banking and served the community through Rotary instead.
“You don’t have to make a choice. You can continue to do what you’re doing and still do your bit for society,” Ms Sonali said.
She joined the Rotary Club of Queen’s Necklace in Mumbai in 2016 and the RCS in 2020, after relocating to Singapore for family reasons. As the second woman and first Indian woman to serve as RCS president, Ms Sonali says there’s still room for progress. “Our club only started accepting women in the mid-90s. I think about 22 per cent of our current members are women. Ideally, it should be more,” she said.
The RCS also sponsors nine Interact Clubs and three Rotaract Clubs in the country, which empower students aged 14 to 18 (Interact) and aged 19 to 25 (Rotaract) to develop leadership skills through local and international community service projects.
Anura Rathi, 17, outgoing president of the Global Indian International School’s (GIIS) Interact Club, said: “Moving to Singapore at a young age, I naturally looked up to people who shared my ethnicity and culture. Seeing someone like Madam Sinha become RCS president made me feel like my dreams are within reach.”
She added that her club’s 2024-2025 core team is made up entirely of girls, with an overall member ratio of eight girls to three boys. “Interact doesn’t just prepare us for leadership, it gives us the tools to change the narrative around who gets to lead,” Anura said.
