The Constant Innovator

Henri Matisse might have said “creativity takes courage” but it’s clear that Datin Sunita Mei-Lin Rajakumar lives, breathes and embodies the essence of those very words. A renowned venture capitalist with a background in law and chartered accountancy, what has been occupying her heart, mind and soul of late is the launch of DiverseCity 2015 this month. Conceived over a year ago, it all began when Datin Sunita noticed the lack of a leading performing arts festival in Malaysia’s capital, unlike in other countries, as seen in the arts festivals of Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne, some of which have been running for decades, with Penang’s George Town Festival running into its sixth edition already.

“A festival is not only an opportunity to showcase the diversity of a nation but it is also an important economic stimulus,” she says. “In the west, culture or arts visitors also tend to be high net-worth individuals who spend more than business tourists who, in turn, spend more than regular tourists. Kuala Lumpur hosts a million visitors every month, while the Klang Valley has a catchment of seven million. I want this festival to be a dedicated month on the annual calendar where people can truly obtain a multi-sensory experience of the true soul of the nation, hence its name, DiverseCity.”

THE DEBUT OF DIVERSECITY
Not content with creating yet another festival made from the same mould as others, Datin Sunita thought up a creative new concept with the ultimate aim of delighting culture and arts enthusiast as well as putting in place the prototype for what looks set to be one of the most diverse, unique and all-encompassing arts festivals to date.

With an ambitious plan of multiple shows scheduled nightly, spanning six artistic genres, DiverseCity 2015 is designed to electrify. Datin Sunita has also called upon her troupe of loyal, artistic friends to add a touch that will propel the maiden festival into a league of its own. Divided into genres that range from dance to comedy, each one will also be headed by a curator/producer – an individual who is an icon in his respective field with a talent for reaching out to audiences via the staging of compelling shows.

Dance, for example, is curated by Datuk Ramli Ibrahim, Malaysia’s dance legend who was honoured by UNESCO in 2012 as a Living Treasure, while music is curated and produced by the great jazz artist Michael Veerapen.  “I first met Datin Sunita on the production of M The Opera, where I was enlisted to do some orchestration and to play the piano,” says Veerapen. “When the idea of DiverseCity came up, I thought it was a bold idea indeed, getting professionals in the business to curate for their respective genres. Also, having worked with her before, I know that when she says she’s going to do something, it’ll certainly happen!”

Scheduled to kick off on 1 September (the landmark festival will run until 4 October), Datin Sunita’s corporate training has also meant an ambitious set of KPIs have to be achieved, including a targeted reach of 150,000 visitors. “The artists and curators involved feel strongly that the time has come for Kuala Lumpur to step up and claim this space of an international arts festival founded on diversity,” says Datin Sunita.

“Also, due to the high economic impact arising from a festival of such scale, we have the full support of various government bodies, freeing the talents involved to be as artistic, creative and visionary as they can be. As you know, 2015 has also been declared the Year of Festivals and is also the year Malaysia chairs the ASEAN Secretariat. All in, I can say that we are benefiting from an opportune alignment of many vested interests.”

Eddin Khoo of Pusaka agrees: “Kuala Lumpur, this great cosmopolis, has needed a festival of this kind for decades. We had a great, if modest, start in 1985 when Datuk (now Tan Sri) Shahrir Samad was Minister of Federal Territories and the city was used organically as a venue for some very eccentric performances and stagings of art and performance that involved groups, including the Five Arts Centre and artists such as the late Datuk Ibrahim Hussein. Like many an inspired thing, sustainability proved a problem. Hence, when approached by Datin Sunita for DiverseCity, I had no hesitation and, in fact, did advise her that there was great interest in the traditional arts here in Malaysia. Furthermore, any serious Arts Festival ought to have a segment dedicated to the ‘traditional’. After all, without a sense of tradition, what is anything anyway?”

Spread across three venues in the city, DiverseCity 2015 will encompass six performing arts genres – dance, music, traditional, comedy, literature and visual arts. “Aside from compelling stage shows, many of which are world premieres and unusual collaborations, visitors can also look forward to affordable price points for tickets, including many free performances,” says Datin Sunita.

“The programmes will also run throughout the day so there will always be something fascinating for the visitor to see, do and experience while every weekend will be jam-packed with activities!”

Adding an altruistic element to the festival is also the fact that every performing troupe and artist has pledged to give back to the community in some way. “On top of the prime-time, full-length performances, there will also be talks, interviews, workshops and master classes during non-show hours,” says Datin Sunita. “Malaysia is such a unique melting pot of cultures. Tag lines used to describe the country have included the successful ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ as well as the more recent ‘1Malaysia’.

“With DiverseCity, we want people to experience this first-hand. Even if the show is in a different language, yet one may understand the feelings behind it. Or, if it’s a traditional performance, marvel then at the centuries of cultural evolution that led to its creation. These are the real creative works happening on the ground in Malaysia and we are proud to showcase it to the world, using DiverseCity as a platform.”

MERGING CORPORATE & ARTS WORLDS
Born into a prominent Malaysian family, Datin Sunita is the daughter of Ong Kik Hong and the renowned medical practitioner and socialist leader, Dr MK Rajakumar. She cites her family as the reason and inspiration behind her great love for the arts. “I grew up in a home where the arts were an integral part of our culture,” she shares. Recalling being sent, with her sister Kiren Su-Lin in tow, for all manner of classes, ranging from ballet to modern dance, tap, jazz and piano, Datin Sunita also recalls trying to pick up the violin in her 20s. “My mother is an accomplished pianist and organist on top of being a soprano herself. We constantly had opera music – Verdi was my mother’s favourite – playing loudly in the background at home. And my father’s lovely family house in Bandar Hilir, Malacca, played host regularly to dance, music and vocal masters.”

It was law, however, whose call Datin Sunita chose to heed when pursuing her higher education. Graduating with honours from the University of Bristol, she then set about obtaining her qualification as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales. After cutting her teeth with the London office of Ernst & Young (now EY), followed by six years with RHB Investment Bank in Kuala Lumpur, Datin Sunita took the bold step of establishing her own set-up, Artisan Encipta Ltd, to manage a government-owned foreign technology venture capital fund, the country’s first, overseeing a wide portfolio of technology start-ups.

On the path her career has taken her, Datin Sunita recalls how the first phase of working life entailed many long hours on execution. “The investment bank was a hard taskmaster and I had to pick up many skills, which serve me well to this day. The second phase was managing a portfolio of companies with my business partner, Adin Jarjis, whom I learnt a lot from.” The key lessons, she shares, included how to effectively manage and grow a business, what motivates a leadership team as well as how to understand their key drivers, only after which business plans and execution can flow naturally.

“I also made a conscious decision to focus on strategy, which involved a lot of thinking, planning, meeting and tapping on many stakeholders as well as using one’s synthesising mind to draw on multiple fields of interest. We must remember that for whatever we seek to achieve, we still have to work within an eco-system as a successful business never operates in one specific area alone.” Once the environment is understood, she explains, it becomes easier to articulate a value proposition as well as invite stakeholders to participate.

Not content with corporate excellence, Datin Sunita also sits on the board of numerous foundations and enterprises including Yayasan Usman Awang, Yayasan myNadi and Yayasan Seni, while serving as Chairman of the board of directors of Caring Pharmacy and Audit Committee Chairman of Hibiscus Petroleum, amongst others.

For all her corporate drive and derring-do, Datin Sunita never loses sight of the soul. “The experience of the soul is very important to me,” she says. “This means business- or money-generating projects aren’t the only priorities for me. I also believe in my ability to trigger change for good.”

CATALYST FOR CHANGE
And it is this belief that will be made manifest this month, when DiverseCity, Kuala Lumpur’s inaugural international arts festival, is launched. Veerapen says: “I think Datin Sunita has done an amazing thing by bringing DiverseCity to life. It is just what Kuala Lumpur needs and this festival will grow into something that will be a landmark festival internationally. She’s just the right person for this daunting job!”

Khoo also adds: “Being a person very committed to market-driven economics, I think she is perfectly poised to position herself in arts and culture. It has always been the hope of classical capitalist economics that money will induce ‘all that is good’, as Adam Smith says, in terms of a cultural flowering and the birth of a highly-cultivated, civilised and sophisticated collective.”

“Between work and play, office and home, family and friends as well as material and spiritual matters, it is easy to lose sight of the balance we need,” muses Datin Sunita. A firm believer in maintaining life balance and a subscriber to the “all things in moderation” philosophy, she also stresses the importance of supporting the arts to do so. “When I first heard Ravi Shankar perform live, I was transported,” she recalls. “It was a spiritual experience and I literally lost myself in the performance. Likewise, when I listen to Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2, I am always intensely moved. And, recently, when I watched a James Cousins contemporary dance, I had tears rolling down my face. When we recognise the importance of having balance and moderation in life, while really embracing the beauty of diversity – after stilling our busy, noisy, hectic lives enough to perceive the murmurings of the soul – we will, naturally and instinctively recognise the importance of the arts in our lives, the ability of which to recognise has been there all the while.”

This year has been particularly fulfilling for Datin Sunita, who’s juggling corporate life with the impending launch of the festival with aplomb. “You’ll find that working with the right people truly elevates the service, product or experience to another level,” she observes. “I’ve been fortunate to work with great groups of people time and again and I have since found that a big component of this lies in having the right vision for your project, which, in turn, keeps every member aligned to shared goals and values.

“The other important lesson is keeping perspective. Things will inevitably veer from the original plan, possibly even go wrong. But this will actually bring out the best in your team if you are collaborating with the right people. It should also bring out the best in you.

“The flip side,” she laughs, “is that I need to be laser-focused on the underlying business principles, not to mention resilient enough, to make the call that an individual is detracting from the group’s energy instead of being an asset.”

OF VISION & VISIONARIES
Given her multi-pronged approach to life, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Datin Sunita was destined to live a life as diverse as her inaugural festival’s title. “I never wanted just one job. I still remember, clear as day, that I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher as well as a detective,” she laughs. “Even from that age, I didn’t think I had to choose just one profession.” Likewise, it is her desire that DiverseCity 2015, and indeed the arts scene as a whole in Malaysia, be received and aided from a variety of sources.

“It has been gratifying to know that we have such extraordinary talent in this country, representative of the incredible diversity in our lives. The curators have committed decades of their lives towards their craft while earning the respect of their peers, both locally and internationally. With DiverseCity, another window has opened for them to step through and create new vistas in their landscape. So, I want to stress that everyone and anyone can help.

“From buying tickets to volunteering, all these activities create an ecosystem around the artists. And this is where stakeholders, through their involvement, demonstrate their understanding and appreciation of why the arts are important in the life of an individual, the community, a society and a nation.” As Matisse remarked: creativity takes courage. But it’s equally clear that Datin Sunita Rajakumar’s debut of DiverseCity demands attention.