Neville Roy Singham (born May 13, 1954) is an American businessman and social activist. He is the founder and former chairman of ThoughtWorks, an IT consulting company that provides custom software, software tools, and consulting services and which he sold to a private equity firm for $785 million in 2017.
Singham has spent $100s of millions to fund various progressive causes/groups (including Nkrumah School, Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party, New Frame news in South Africa, Tricontinental in the US). However, critics charge he is using shell companies to disguise his funding and pushing Chinese government/media talking points (denial of Uyghur genocide, opposition to helping Ukraine fight against the Russian invasion)[2][3] as "independent content" and the concerns of grassroots progressives.[3]
Early life[edit]
Singham's father was Archie Singham.[4] In his youth, Singham was a member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a Black nationalist–Maoist group, taking a job at a Chrysler plant in Detroit in 1972 as an activist in the group.[2] He attended Howard University before starting a consulting firm for equipment-leasing companies from his Chicago home.[2]
Singham founded ThoughtWorks, a Chicago-based IT consulting company that provides custom software, software tools, and consulting services, in the late 1980s; it was incorporated in 1993.[5][6]
From 2001 to 2008, Singham was a strategic technical consultant for Huawei.[2][6]
By 2008, ThoughtWorks employed 1,000 people and was growing at the rate of 20–30% p.a., with bases around the world. Its clients included Microsoft, Oracle, major banks, and The Guardian newspaper.[7] Singham owned 97% of the common stock of the company.[7] By 2010, its clients included Daimler AG, Siemens and Barclays, and had opened a second headquarters in Bangalore.[8]
In 2010, he opened Thoughtworks' Fifth Agile Software Development Conference in Beijing, where he spoke about his influence on Huawei.[2]
Singham sold the company to private equity firm Apax Partners in 2017 for $785 million, by which time it had 4,500 employees across 15 countries, including South Africa and Uganda.[5][9][3]: 1 Its chief scientist, Martin Fowler, wrote that Singham had not been involved in the running of the business for some years by that time:
"While I was surprised to hear that he was selling the company, the news was not unexpected. Over the last few years Roy has been increasingly involved in his activist work, and spending little time running ThoughtWorks. ... He's been able to do this because he's built a management team that's capable of running the company largely without him. But as I saw him spend more energy on his activist work, it was apparent it would be appealing to him to accelerate that activism with the money that selling ThoughtWorks would bring."[6][10]
Singham has business interests in Chinese companies in the food and consultancy markets.[2]
Ideas and positions[edit]
At ThoughtWorks, Singham was a pioneer of agile software development[5][11] and has helped popularize Lean manufacturing, such as that used in the Toyota business model.[12]
Singham opposes proprietary software development and supports open access and the Creative Commons movement. In 2008, Singham said, "As a socialist I believe the world should have access to the best ideas in software for free. My goal is a technically-superior infrastructure to solve the world's problems."[7][13] In the same interview, he described himself as a big fan of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, describing the country under his rule as a "phenomenally democratic place." He also described his admiration for China, where ThoughtWorks had a growing operation, describing it as a model for governance: "China is teaching the West that the world is better off with a dual system of both free-market adjustments and long-term planning."[7] According to his associates, Singham "has long admired" "Maoism", the ideology of the founder of the People's Republic of China, Mao Tse Tung.[3]
He is a supporter of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, for example speaking in his defence at a 2011 event hosted by the Real News Network, alongside fellow activist software businessman Peter Thiel and former intelligence whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.[14] Alongside Ellsberg, he has also advocated for hackers such as Jeremy Hammond and Aaron Swartz—the latter, a friend of Singham's, having worked for him at ThoughtWorks when he committed suicide while facing prosecution by the US government.[15] Singham described Swartz's prosecution as "part of a coordinated campaign to scare young Internet activists" in the age of WikiLeaks.[16]
In a 2013 interview, he advocated for frugal innovation, describing ThoughtWorks' investments in such projects in India, Brazil and China.[17]
In July 2023, Singham "joined a Communist Party workshop" about international promotion of the Chinese Communist party.[3]
Pro-Chinese government controversies[edit]
According to an August 2023 report by New York Times, Singham is "working closely" with the "Chinese government media machine", spending "at least $275 million" to finance their worldwide propaganda, disguising it "as independent content". His finance flows via "a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies" to groups such as "a think tank in Massachusetts ... an event space in Manhattan, ... a political party in South Africa ... news organizations in India and Brazil". where it mixes together "progressive advocacy" with "Chinese government talking points".[3]
In 2021, India's Enforcement Directorate named Singham in a money laundering case, alleging that he was the source of ₹380 million ($5 million) given to Indian news site People's Dispatch between 2018 and 2021, to promote a pro-Chinese narrative in the Indian media.[18][19] The funds were alleged to have passed through a network of companies and NGOs including Delaware-based Worldwide Media Holdings (allegedly owned by Singham), and the Justice and Education Fund, GSPAN LLC and the Tricontinental Institute (which allegedly shared the same address) in the US, and Centro Popular de Mídias, Brazil.[19][20][13] Interestingly enough Tricontinental's executive director, Vijay Prashad while recalling his (Singham's) financing in 2021 described him as, “A Marxist with a massive software company!” on Twitter."[3]
According to a January 2022 report by New Lines Magazine of the Newlines Institute, a think tank led by Hassan Hassan at the Fairfax University of America, Singham has channeled almost $65 million to a network of non-profit organizations, including Code Pink, that deny the Uyghur genocide.[2] (Code Pink once criticized China’s rights record but now defends its internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs.)[3]
In a November 2022 report, Intelligence Online revealed Singham was discreetly funneling money to groups lobbying against Western support to Ukraine following Russia's invasion, under the guise of "anti-war" efforts.[21]
According to the The New York Times report, "[n]one of Mr. Singham’s nonprofits" in the United States "have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as is required of groups that seek to influence public opinion on behalf of foreign powers."[3]
One such nonprofit, "No Cold War", allegedly appears to be "a loose collective" run mostly by "American and British activists", arguing that Western rhetoric against China distracts from more important issues "like climate change and racial injustice". In fact, (according to research of the New York Times), the group is "part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda".[3]
In email reply to questions by the New York Times Singham stated, “I categorically deny and repudiate any suggestion that I am a member of, work for, take orders from, or follow instructions of any political party or government or their representatives. I am solely guided by my beliefs, which are my long-held personal views.”[3]
Personal life[edit]
Singham lives in Shanghai in the Peoples Republic of China. He is married to Code Pink's Jodie Evans.[2] Their wedding was attended "Amy Goodman, host of 'Democracy Now!'; Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream; and V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, who wrote 'The Vagina Monologues'".
His son Nathan (Nate) Singham works for the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.[22][2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Roy_Singham
