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NUS Law student wins inaugural World Universities Public Speaking Invitational Championship 2025
From fully believing that he had bungled one of his speeches to emerging champion at his first international public speaking competition, NUS Law final-year student Kamal Ashraf Bin Kamil Jumat’s experience at the World Universities Public Speaking Invitational Championship 2025 was quite the rollercoaster ride.
The University of Macau invited 11 prestigious universities, including NUS, Tsinghua University, Korea University, the University of Oxford and the University of British Columbia, to send representatives to the inaugural edition of the championship that it hosted on 30 August 2025. Participants were required to prepare and deliver a speech based on the theme “Creating a Diverse Future Together”, answer questions from a panel of judges, and deliver an impromptu speech based on a randomly selected topic.
When NUS was invited to field a student speaker for the competition, Ms Sim Ee Waun, a tutor at the Department of Communications and New Media (CNM), immediately recognised her student Kamal’s potential to do well on this stage and put his name into the pool of nominees. After he was selected, she mentored him in the lead-up to the competition.
Despite battling nervousness as a first-time competitor in a field of high-calibre speakers, Kamal completed the first two segments with relative confidence, trusting in his pre-competition training and rehearsals. His prepared speech, entitled “Bringing Tomorrow”, discussed how diversity grows through active, consistent efforts and used stories such as the origins of Singlish and his own experiences as a firefighter in National Service to encourage listeners to build trust through communication.
For the third segment, he hoped to draw topics relating to Education or Culture from the three possible categories of impromptu speech topics, as they could relate more closely to his experiences in youth and community volunteering.
Instead, he drew “How do friendships shape our personal growth?” from the Friendship category.
With just 10 seconds of preparation time, he recalled Ms Sim’s advice to “give a speech only you can give” and rapidly composed a speech using the philosophical metaphor of tabula rasa to frame anecdotes of how his multicultural friendships have shaped him.
Kamal felt extremely nervous during the impromptu speech and left the stage disappointed with his performance. He immediately texted Ms Sim: “I don’t think I made it.”
Ms Sim was watching the livestreamed competition and disagreed with his assessment. She described his impromptu speech as “brilliant,” noting: “Not only was his speech eloquent and personal, it carried good points too. Believe me, it is not easy to do this in 10 seconds.”
She added: “His win reminds us that on the world stage, we should expect to win. Why not? We may be a little red dot, but we do punch way above our weight, and Kamal is a shining example of that.”
Although Kamal was unhappy with the speech at the time, it ended up being a meaningful and precious element of his win.
“I managed to talk about how my friends from other races have always been allies to me, helping me to feel comfortable in preserving my traditions and my daily practices. These anecdotes didn’t fit into my prepared speech, so I’m glad I got to present these messages that are important to me, at a time when Singapore is celebrating SG60, diversity and multiculturalism,” he said.
Speaking from the heart
As a debater since primary school and now a law student, Kamal is no stranger to speaking before judges and an audience. He currently serves as a part-time debate coach for a local secondary school and chairs a national debating academy organised by the Malay Youth Literary Association. His law training also includes polishing his trial advocacy and interpersonal communication skills through pro bono projects at the Syariah Court.
In his quest to learn more about the art of public speaking, he took up Public Speaking and Critical Reasoning offered by CNM as an elective course in Semester 2 of AY2024/2025. “I wanted to learn the technical skills behind speaking in front of people and connecting with them — something a bit more based on personality and more heartfelt, rather than doing it as part of a job,” said Kamal, noting that he learnt how to tailor material to the audience and craft speeches in different styles.
Nominating him for the competition was an easy decision, said Ms Sim. “In my five years of teaching public speaking at NUS, Kamal stands out as an incredibly talented public speaker who speaks with conviction and polish, and he is sharp as a pin. So when there was a call to nominate students for this competition, it was only natural that I put his name forward.”
Kamal spent the second half of the semester and part of his summer writing and rewriting his draft with Ms Sim’s help via WhatsApp and Zoom calls, while juggling an internship that left him with little time to rehearse until he arrived in Macau two days before the competition.
He started his days in Macau at 6am to rehearse intensively in his hotel room before heading out for activities organised by the University of Macau, such as soundchecks and workshops with his fellow competitors. Although most of the contestants were friendly, Kamal grew nervous as he learnt about their competitive speaking experience and training.
“These were some of the best public speakers I’ve ever met,” he said. “They were fantastic and they came from very established institutions that are well known for their craft in the English language, so the pressure was there.”
His nervousness was offset by the knowledge that he had supportive family and friends who would be happy for him regardless of the results. His mother frequently reminded him to just enjoy himself, and his friends refrained from pressuring him to come back with a win.
“They knew there was no point in adding pressure onto me, because they knew I was going to do it myself anyway,” said Kamal in jest.
He came away from the experience with a deep respect for the other contestants and a drive to continue improving his craft. When he was asked to give an acceptance speech with some of his public speaking tips at the competition’s closing dinner, Kamal expressed his admiration for his fellow competitors by asking them to share their own tips with him.
“Some of them had styles which I couldn’t pull off. Sofia (Lopez Castillo, first runner-up) from the University of British Columbia — her style was very emotional, very heartfelt. I’m a bit too clean or refined sometimes, and it’s hard for me to dig deep and hit those emotive notes,” he said. “For every one word of advice I was asked to give, I knew I had ten times as much to learn in return.”
Another outstanding speaker he recalled was second runner-up Benjamin Thomas from Stanford University, who was impressively calm in his delivery, especially when answering the impromptu questions.
Kamal concluded: “There are elements that I want to take from all 10 other speakers to become a better speaker, because this is just at the university level and I can see all these different skills that I need to pick up. The biggest takeaway for me is that there’s a lot more that I can learn.”
The full recording of the World Universities Public Speaking Invitational Championship 2025 is available on YouTube.
