Mary Yong, Co-Founder
Specialist Speech and Language Therapist B.App.Sc Speech Pathology MSPA (Australia) MSALTS (Singapore)
Mary has worked with children and young people on the autism spectrum for over 30 years and is passionate about the impact of social understanding on their well-being. She is committed to advocating for more systematic intervention and continues to champion ways to enable professionals and parents to teach social understanding. Her work with Catherine Pownall resulted in the creation the Bridges social curriculum.
Mary is held in high regard in Singapore for her significant contributions as consultant in the establishment of the Autism Resource Centre (Singapore) as well as holding the position of inaugural president of the Speech And Language Therapy Association Singapore (SALTS). She established and managed the largest speech and language therapy department at Singapore General Hospital; and initiated a Memorandum Of Understanding between the University of Sydney, Australia, and her Department for continuing research and development. She has lectured to both Ministry of Health and Education, Singapore and presented at International Conferences in the USA and Australia.
Dr Judith Gould
Special Advisor
Judith is a world-renowned Clinical Psychologist and co-Founder of the National Autistic Society’s Lorna Wing Centre for Autism. She has made an exceptional contribution to the autism community.
Judith and Lorna’s ground-breaking work on autism as a spectrum condition forms the basis of our understanding of autism today. She continues her work at the Lorna Wing Centre in the training of professionals in diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders using the Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders (DISCO), which she created with Dr Lorna Wing. She also continues her clinical work in the diagnosis and support of women and girls on the autism spectrum.
Catherine and Mary had the privilege of working jointly with Judith on the development of diagnostic services in Singapore under the Reach-Me Project. Judith graciously opened the Bridges specialist clinic in 2000; and was a mentor through their 12-year development process to address the need for a long-term social curriculum. Based on the core feature of the autism spectrum, she believes the key is social understanding which is the basis of the Bridges Curriculum.
Chris Ong
Chief Technical Officer
As a seasoned software architect and full-stack developer with over 25 years’ experience, Chris has been involved in high-end architecting, designing, and building large-scale enterprise and commercial systems for industries including: banking, stockbroking, mortgage, utilities, and general business applications. Chris specialises in high-end architecture consulting services, focusing on scalable, performance, interoperability, and extensible design. Currently, Chris is providing technical leadership and helping to develop cloud services and software portfolios across multiple ventures.
Chris’ vision is to build a world-class platform for Bridges In Social Understanding that will have measurable positive impact to the lives of these special gifted children.