Siti Sabariah Ahmad Murtazam, Assistant Vice President of People & Culture, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (Diperbadankan), widely known as KWAP, secured the Best Up and Coming HR Leader category at the 2025–2026 HR Stars Awards Malaysia. This win highlights her career trajectory, starting as a young talent in the graduate programme to her current role as a transformative culture architect. By combining behavioural science with practical strategies, her work proves to the wider human capital community that strategic development can move far beyond simple administrative support to actively align a large public sector workforce with critical national priorities.
Her design of the UPSKILL initiative offers a clear case study in non-executive career growth. This specialised Mini-MBA programme was introduced specifically to build digital fluency, management capability, and business acumen among non-executive personnel, helping to instil renewed motivation and the confidence that individual contributions truly matter. This focus on professional progression is balanced alongside her early launch of “The Learning Zone”, KWAP’s first digital learning platform, which expanded into group-wide LinkedIn Learning tracks to provide self-directed development opportunities at scale.
Shifting focus to organisational psychology, Siti engineered the internal KWAP Culture Framework to operationalise three distinct institutional enablers: Purpose, Trust, and Camaraderie. To make this structural framework active rather than aspirational, she introduced specific leadership routines and team interactions across every level of the business. At the executive level, formal “Culture Check-Ins” were established to give senior managers regular space to identify trust gaps and adjust individual behaviours, ensuring that true cultural change started at the very top of the institution.
The firm launched a Culture Socialisation Platform featuring public leadership pledges, metaverse experiences, and departmental dialogue budgets to embed cultural ownership. Complemented by a Trust Arena team building experience removing workplace hierarchy, this framework proves safeguarding national retirement security requires progressive leaders who treat workforce culture as an intentional science.
