When he was 15, Jonah left the Philippines and moved to Singapore with his mother and two siblings to join his aircraft engineer father. He joined Loyang Secondary School where his love for IT was evident when he single-handedly redesigned its website, having picked up web designing on his own.

After his O levels, Jonah decided to pursue his love for IT at TP and subsequently, the O-level 12-pointer took up the Information Technology course. His passion for the course was clear and that has driven him to graduating today with a very impressive 3.97 Cumulative Grade Point Average, 20 distinctions, a diploma with merit and as the top student of his course.

Describing his TP experience as “much more than what I hoped it would be”, Jonah is grateful for the many opportunities he has had to interact with lecturers and other students. His well-rounded experience included being involved in local and overseas projects, as well as in TP-wide events such as the Open House and Campus Care Network Day. According to Jonah, all these experiences have made him more confident when interacting with people, given him a global outlook and enriched his life tremendously. As vice-chairman of Info-Strategists, a Special Interest Group at the Temasek Informatics & IT School, Jonah also had many opportunities to organise events that promote IT.

His achievements are aplenty. In 2006, he came in second in the Tertiary Institutions Council for Environment Web Design Competition and was first runner-up in the Motorola MOTODEV J2ME Developers’ Competition. In 2007, he was national champion in the Microsoft Office Specialist Challenge (Excel Category) and went on to represent Singapore in the Worldwide Microsoft competition in Orlando, Florida. There he emerged runner up, overcoming participants from over 40 countries. Also in 2007, Jonah was part of a team which emerged one of the semi-finalists of the Singapore leg of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Competition.

During the course of his studies at TP, Jonah secured professional certifications such as the Microsoft Office Specialist certification and the Sun Certified Java Programmer certification. He was also handpicked by Microsoft Singapore to be a Microsoft Student Partner (MSP), representing TP in the MSP community.

Known to be compassionate and socially-aware, Jonah has also been involved in various community outreach projects in Cambodia and Vietnam. “These experiences have taught me never to take things for granted,” he says.

Looking ahead, Jonah hopes to specialise in information systems when he does his Computer Science degree course at the National University of Singapore where he has already secured a place. To him, success will come if there is passion for what you do. Indeed, his success to date proves the truth in that statement.