About me

Welcome to my profile. My full name is Fong Mun Hong, people call me Mun Hong. I am someone driven by curiosity about how things work, and I enjoy finding ways to make them work better.

My early years

I grew up in Malaysia - a country of in-betweens. In between a developed economy and a developing one. In between democracy and authoritarianism. In between religious and secular governance. In between communal unity and communal division. Living in these tensions shaped my curiosity in trying to understand these forces – and how our realities are shaped by them.

The 2011 Bersih 2.0 rallies marked my first political awakening. As a teenager just finishing secondary school, I was suddenly exposed to newspaper headlines about mass protests, clean and fair elections, corruption, media freedom, costs of living, unemployment, and government policies. Reading my household subscription of The Star newspaper that was delivered by a motorcycle rider to our doorstep every day opened up an entirely new world for me - a world outside of physics, chemistry, and biology, and into the world of current issues.

That curiosity first took me into economics in my pre-university years, and then into my undergraduate studies in economics, banking, and finance. Those years taught me how markets work, what financial institutions do, and how government policies function in shaping our everyday life. During this time, I also discovered that I enjoyed working with data and statistics, at a time when social media was only beginning to emerge and “big data” was still a concept very few were talking about.

A conventional path after graduation would have been a career in finance, which many of my classmates have gone on to pursue. I spent time working with HSBC, CIMB, and with an AIA insurance agent during my years in university. Ironically, those experiences made one thing very clear to me: A long-term career in a financial institution was not for me.

A career in national and international development

When I graduated, I spent three months in rural Cambodia as part of a youth volunteering program. I came away from that experience realising how little I understood about our education systems – particularly in Malaysia. That realisation led me to apply for an internship at Teach For Malaysia.

The internship became a full-time role in under two months. That marked the beginning of my professional life in education and public-sector partnership. I worked closely with stakeholders across the system – teachers, school leaders, middle administrators, and senior policymakers at the Ministry of Education – bridging public and private sector efforts in national development. That experience taught me that good ideas and well-designed programs are not enough. Sustainable, systemic change requires political will, institutional buy-in, and political momentum.

In 2020, I joined Undi18, a youth movement that had successfully advocated for lowering Malaysia’s voting age, to support the implementation of its first internationally funded program by USAID. This unexpectedly became my entry point into the international development space.

That same year, I began working with the International Republican Institute (IRI) as a local national expert supporting the organisation’s nationwide programs in Malaysia. Over the next five years, I managed and implemented 11 nationally scoped programs, cumulatively valued at over RM 30 million. My work covered youth political participation, political party development, civil society development, inclusive governance, and institutional reform. I worked alongside some of Malaysia’s leading grassroots organisations, policymakers, and young people who are deeply committed to the communities they serve.

As a Senior Program Specialist at IRI, I led country-level programming while serving as the local lead for monitoring, evaluation and learning. What I am most proud of from my time at IRI is having worked with over 60 NGOs and CSOs across Malaysia – supporting them in program design, accessing international funding, monitoring and evaluation, and implementation. I also had the opportunity to work with hundreds of political party members across 12 parties in the country, as we ran programs that supported party development and youth leadership development. During this period, I contributed to public research examining youth participation within political parties, and the motivations of young voters in Malaysia.

Consultancy, research and beyond

Beyond IRI, I have co-authored a qualitative research, titled “Cost of Politics in Malaysia”, funded by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, examining how financial barriers across Malaysia’s electoral cycle shape who can realistically contest for public office - and who remains marginalised.

Alongside this, I have advised and supported CSOs through consultancy work, particularly in grant writing, monitoring and evaluation systems, and internal organisational strengthening. I am especially interested in helping organisations move from ideas to fundable, implementable designs that are well-positioned to access international funding while responding to local needs.

Today, I work regionally as a Proposal Manager with Cambridge University Press & Assessment, leading complex, multi-stakeholder bids across the Asia-Pacific. This role sits at the intersection of strategy, technical frameworks, storytelling, and cross-functional collaboration. At the end of 2025, I have completed six bids submitted to international donors and national governments valued at more than RM 12 million.

Academically, I also now hold a Master of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Malaya. My research focused on the Undi18 youth movement, examining how social movements emerge, mobilise, and translate their momentum into political impact.

At the core of most of what I do is a belief that civil society and young people are critical drivers of social progress. I strive to continue to build the skills, experience, and perspective needed to support organisations and individuals who are working, often against the odds, to create meaningful change.