Siti Yariyati Mohamed

Co-Founder & Chief Dreamer

Starfish Singapore

Siti Yariyati is an educator with over 24 years of experience working with youth. She believes that structured education works best when it is rooted in genuine care for the communities it serves and that youth thrive when they are treated with respect and trust.

She is currently Associate Lecturer at Academies Australasia Collegea and a tutor at Absolute Learning Centre. Previously, she was the Academic Head for youth-at-risk at JBS International College where she developed frameworks for engaging youth facing multi-faceted challenges such as financial hardships and family complications, alongside recruiting and training teachers and building new partnerships.

Beyond her teaching career, Siti voluntarily co-founded Starfish Singapore in 2015, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering out-of-school youth i.e. youth who show long-term absenteeism in school or have exited mainstream education without graduating. Through a decade of hands-on leadership, Siti grew the organisation from a three-person founding team to a community of over 50 active volunteers, personally overseeing programming that has reached more than 400 out-of-school youth. Starfish Singapore has since launched a new bridging program, Ad Astra, and brought on two long-term volunteers as full-time staff.