our BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Kevin Hiew Wai Pang
Mr Kevin Hiew has vast experience in the marine field, having graduated with Bachelor of Fisheries (Fisheries Management) from Kagoshima University, Japan. He was the Former Head of the Marine Parks Division of the Department of Fisheries, Malaysia.
Prior to that, he was the State Director of Fisheries in Johor, Malacca, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. He was also the Head of the Malaysian Fisheries Enforcement Division.
Mr Kevin was recently honoured with the Edward T LaRoe III Memorial Award at the 2019 International Congress for Conservation Biology in Kuala Lumpur.
Lim Jit Cheng
Mr. Lim Jit Cheng, or better known as Jit, is a Certified Practicing Accountant with a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) from Curtin University of Technology, Australia.
He is currently the Partner, Restructuring, Turnaround & Cost Transformation, Strategy, Risk & Transactions for Deloitte. He handles various aspects of restructuring, insolvency, monitoring accountants, dispute resolution and non-performing loan advisory over an assortment of industries.
He was previously with KPMG Malaysia for over 20 years. Jit has vast experience in the accounting sector, having first joined KPMG Singapore in 1991, involved in banking, stockbroking, and manufacturing audits. He joined the Rating Agency Malaysia in 1993 as a Senior Analyst.
Jit has been actively involved with Reef Check Malaysia for over 10 years and is the key person behind KPMG and RCM’s long-term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts
Datuk Hiswani Harun
Datuk Hiswani retired from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in February 2016 after serving for about 12 years. Her last post at MITI was Deputy Secretary General (Trade).
After retirement, she served as Advisor to MITI until December 2016 as Chief Negotiator to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Prior to MITI, Datuk Hiswani has also served in Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Primary Industry, Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (Director of Conservation and Environmental Management) and the National Institute of Public Administration (INTAN).
She has also served as Minister Counselor and Malaysia's Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) based in Geneva, Switzerland from 2007 and 2012.
She currently serves on the Board of the Malaysian Green Technology and Climate Change Corporation (MGTC) as an independent director. She also chairs the Green Technology Malaysia Alliance (GTMA), a holding company of MGTC.
Datuk Hiswani was appointed as a Reef Check Malaysia trustee in 2018.
Ruth Yeoh
Ruth Yeoh is an Executive Director at YTL Singapore Pte Ltd and Director at YTL-SV Carbon Sdn Bhd, YTL’s in-house carbon consultancy.
Eldest in her fourth-generation family infrastructure conglomerate business, she heads Sustainability for the YTL Group of Companies and pioneered the educational campaign "Climate Change Week" in her hometown of Malaysia.
She has received numerous accolades including “Asia’s Power Businesswomen” and “Heroes of Philanthropy” by Forbes in 2015 and the Medallion for Distinguished Service by the Ministry of National Development in Singapore in 2019. She currently serves on the Board of Reef Check Malaysia and is an Executive Committee Member of Women in Sustainability and Environment (WISE) and a Singapore Advisory Council Member of The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
Ruth is also a published author and co-editor of the Book “Cut Carbon, Grow Profits: Business Strategies for Managing Climate Change & Sustainability” and co-founded the Recyclothes Group, a sustainable fashion and social enterprise that promotes the circular economy.
Ralph Justin Dixon
Ralph Dixon is the Executive Director of Sustainability at YTL Corporation Berhad, and has been with YTL for eighteen years.
He is also the CEO of their carbon consulting subsidiary (YTL-SV Carbon) and also manages the sustainability division for the Group.
Ralph graduated from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Management Sciences. He also has a Diploma in Mandarin from the National Taiwan Normal University.
Scientific advisory council
We established a Scientific Advisory Council in 2012 to provide scientific input into the development and management of our programmes. The Council aims to:
review outputs from Reef Check Malaysia to ensure they are scientifically accurate and, where relevant, presented in a manner that is useful to scientists;
periodically review progress of our programmes to ensure they are generating scientifically relevant and/or useful information; and
guide the development of new programmes to ensure they are scientifically relevant.
The members of RCM's Scientific Advisory Council are:
Dr. Jillian Ooi, Universiti Malaya
Dr Jillian Ooi is a marine geographer at the Department of Geography, Universiti Malaya, specializing in seagrass ecosystems—their spatial distribution, environmental drivers, and the vital ecosystem services they provide to coastal communities.
Her research has contributed to the establishment of the Pulau Lima marine park (2023) and strengthened protections for marine parks around Tioman Island (2005–2007) and the Mersing Islands (2016–2019). Jillian is a Komai Fellow (2015) and a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation (2022), fellowships that underpin her work in seagrass restoration.
Deeply concerned about the degradation of seagrass meadows in Malaysia, Jillian is passionate about raising awareness of their importance. She combines science and music to deliver urgent conservation messages, reaching broader audiences through innovative storytelling.
As Artistic and Music Director of Rhythm in Bronze, an award-winning Malaysian gamelan orchestra, Jillian and her team have pioneered gamelan theatre as a platform for cultural and environmental advocacy.
Mr. Affendi Yang Amri, Universiti Malaya
Affendi Yang Amri is a Research Officer at Universiti Malaya’s Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences (IOES) and a leading expert in coral reef ecology, conservation, and rehabilitation. His research focuses on the biology of Scleractinian corals, particularly along Johor’s east coast.
Affendi began his marine science career in the 1990s at Universiti Malaya, studying mangrove ecology with Dr. A. Sasekumar. He later trained in coral ecophysiology and thermal bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia with Professor Ove Hoegh Guldberg.
In the late 1990s, Affendi helped establish the Reef Check Initiative in Peninsular Malaysia, which later evolved into Reef Check Malaysia. He is the elected President of the Malaysian Society of Marine Sciences (MSMS) and Malaysia's co-coordinator for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) East Asia.
Affendi is dedicated to addressing the impacts of climate change on coral reefs, with a focus on ecosystem connectivity, coral rehabilitation through Project PULIH, and the MyIMCA report.
Dr. Gopinath Nagaraj, Fan Li Marine Consulting
Dr. Gopinath Nagaraj, a fisheries and aquatic environmental specialist, has over 30 years of experience in sustainable aquatic resource management. He holds degrees from Universiti Sains Malaysia, University of the Philippines, Auburn University, and the University of Nottingham.
Currently, he is the Principal Consultant at FanLi Marine and Consultancy Sdn. Bhd. and Chief Technical Officer of FanLi Eco Labs Sdn. Bhd. Dr. Gopinath has led nearly 200 projects, covering fisheries, aquaculture, and aquatic environmental studies across Malaysia, including Penang, Pahang, Terengganu, and Sabah, as well as in Singapore, Brunei, Myanmar, Indonesia, and India.
