I am a PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs – under the National University of Singapore (NUS)-Overseas Graduate Scholarship – who graduated as valedictorian of the class of 2017 with a Master in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS.

My primary research interest revolves around children and adolescents from low-income families, and in particular on the family structures and family quality associated with positive adolescent and family development. I am also interested in the civic engagement of adolescents and youths as well as the social and public policies governing the non-profit and philanthropy sector in Singapore and in Asia.

I have three main ongoing research projects. In addition, I am also working on a roundtable project, on a sports- and community-based programme as well as a solution-focused evaluation, and on two COVID-19-related projects (in Singapore and in the United States):

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I now run socialservice.sg and an accompanying bi-monthly newsletter (tinyletter.com/socialservicesg), focused on presenting and explaining social service research and applied data analysis in Singapore.

I had a personal socio-political blog (July 2009 to July 2019) which is now archived (guanyinmiao.wordpress.com). I previously also wrote for three now-defunct sites: the “Breakfast Network” in 2013 and “The Middle Ground” from 2015 to 2016 as well as “SALT”, an online publication by the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre in 2014.

These archived posts best represent who I am as a blogger (at my best and worst):