Jane Yumiko Ittogi

Jane Ittogi. Photo from Mamahood.

Jane Yumiko Ittogi is the spouse of the President of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam. A lawyer by training, Ms Ittogi is actively engaged in initiatives for social upliftment and sustainability. She has also been long involved in art leadership and as an advocate of the transformative power of art, including for prison inmates.

Until 2018, Ms Ittogi had been the Chair of the Singapore Art Museum for a decade. She had served on the Board and Executive Committee of the National Gallery Singapore, and sat on the boards of the National Heritage Board and Lasalle College of the Arts.

Ms Ittogi chairs Tasek Academy and Social Services, an independent social service agency which helps disadvantaged children and youth build confidence and develop their talents, and enables ex-inmates to rebuild their lives. Amongst other programmes, it runs a large community football-cum-mentoring scheme for youth at risk, including for girls. She also co-chairs Conservation International’s Asia Pacific Advisory Council, and co-founded GreenSG COLLAB with a team of fellow citizens, to help catalyse awareness and community and youth responses to the climate crisis. She also serves on the Foundation Board of the Global Shapers Community.

Background

Family

Ittogi is one of four children born to a Japanese merchant father and a Singaporean Chinese mother. Raised in Singapore since she was three years old, Ittogi grew up in a “Teochew-speaking kampong.” In a Facebook post, Shanmugaratnam described Ittogi as being a diligent child:

“She enjoyed learning from teachers and books, quite unlike myself as I was totally consumed with my sports.”

At present, Ittogi has been married to Shanmugaratnam for 35 years, and the couple has four children together.

Education and qualifications

Ittogi holds a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) (LLB) and a Master of Laws (LLM) from the London School of Economics & Political Science. According to Shanmugaratnam, the London School of Economics & Political Science was where the couple first met, as they “moved in some of the same circles of friends who were deeply interested in social issues.”

Ittogi’s profile on Singapore law firm Shook Lin & Bok also highlights that she was called to the English Bar as a barrister via the prestigious Middle Temple. Middle Temple is one of four Inns of Court in the United Kingdom that has exclusive authority to call their members to the Bar of England and Wales.

Career

Law

Ittogi started her professional career as a lawyer in 1988, where she specialised in international arbitration, litigation & dispute resolution, and restructuring & insolvency.

Throughout her litigation career, Ittogi advised on a broad range of finance-related fields, such as documentary credit, banking issues, shares and commodities trades, and forex contracts and securities regulation.

Following her pupillage at a set of leading commercial chambers, Ittogi worked as an undergraduate and post-graduate lecturer in London, where she taught banking, shipping, and commercial law. She also served as the head of an in-house legal department during this time.

Although Ittogi no longer actively practises law, she is currently listed as a Partner with Shook Lin & Bok.

Involvement in Singapore’s art scene

Upon leaving legal practice, Ms Ittogi contributed actively to Singapore’s arts scene and social upliftment initiatives. Notably, Ittogi has held several key leadership positions across several landmark arts institutions in Singapore.

Below is a tabulation of the positions Ittogi has held and currently holds:

Years Served	Position	Institution	Ref(s).
2008-2013	Board Member	National Heritage Board
2008-2018	Chair	Singapore Art Museum
2011, 2013, 2015, 2017	Co-Chair	Singapore Biennale
2009-2023	Board Member	LASALLE College of the Arts
2010-2018	Board Member	National Gallery Singapore
2014-2018	Chair	Istana Art Collection Advisory Committee

On her departure from the Singapore Art Museum, Ms Ittogi said in a statement:

“It’s been a wonderful journey with the team at the Singapore Art Museum,

working together to put a global focus on contemporary art practices in Singapore and

Southeast Asia, while continuously engaging with artists, audiences and underserved

communities in the region.”

Community outreach

Ittogi is also deeply involved in spearheading Singapore’s community outreach initiatives. While serving as Singapore Art Museum’s Chair, she was responsible for leading the museum’s community engagement programmes through partnerships. One such partnership was with the Yellow Ribbon Project, which led to an annual showcase of inmates’ artwork at the museum.

In 2013, Ittogi started Tasek Jurong Limited, an Institution of a Public Character (IPC)-accredited non-governmental organisation (NGO) that provides financial and social aid to the socially disadvantaged.

While Tasek Jurong started out providing aid to youth-at-risk, it later scaled to include ex-inmates, single parents, the needy and disabled and their families among its beneficiaries. Shanmugaratnam describes Ittogi as “working quite single-mindedly to give confidence and help uplift disadvantaged children in Jurong, especially young teens”, and also “ex-inmates, some of whom became [the couple’s] volunteers and leaders, and [their] friends.”

Ittogi currently serves as the Chair of Tasek Jurong.

Presidential Elections 2023

Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s Facebook update (25 July 2023)

Shanmugaratnam shared a photo of himself and Ittogi in a Facebook post. Photo from Facebook.

On 25 July 2023, Shanmugaratnam updated his Facebook profile picture with a photo of himself and Ittogi. In the picture’s caption, Shanmugaratnam shared details of his marriage with Ittogi, dating back to when the couple first met at the London School of Economics.

Shanmugaratnam also went on to explain his wife’s upbringing, revealing that despite her Japanese heritage, she is not fluent in the Japanese language. He attributed this to her having been brought up in “a mainly Teochew-speaking kampong.” Ittogi has, however, been taking steps to improve her fluency.

Shanmugaratnam ended his post by stating that he has been married to Ittogi for 33 years and has been “blessed with four children, each following their own path.” His post was positively received by Singaporean netizens, gathering at least 14,000 reactions, 619 comments, and 612 shares.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam’s TikTok update (24 July 2023)

One day before his Facebook update, Shanmugaratnam posted a video on his TikTok account, where he and Ittogi chatted with a 97-year-old elderly woman named Mdm Wong at Teck Whye Market.

In the video, Ittogi uses the Teochew dialect to converse with Mdm Wong. In response to a playful quip about how Shanmugaratnam “used to be handsome,” Ittogi responded with “jizun masee buay pai!”, which translates into “Now he is also not bad!”