Dina Zaman has extensive experience in public relations and the media industry, as a consultant as well as personality. She has worked on campaigns and events, and worked over the years as a volunteer for NGOs.  She has conducted workshops for young people in her tenure as a freelance writer.  She has also raised funds for a shelter for marginalised children.

She has recently resigned from The Malaysian Insider, to concentrate on her column-cum-book, ‘Holy Men, Holy Women’, which is a spiritual travelogue on religious communities and personalities in Malaysia. The book will be published hopefully at the end of 2012 or early 2013.

She is also an award-winning writer of non-fiction, fiction and poetry.  She has had media presence locally and abroad as a columnist since 1994 and commentator of current affairs since 2005. She has been quoted in the BBC and interviewed on Everywoman, a women’s programme on Al Jazeera. She has helmed three columns: Off Our Backs (The Sun, Malaysia in 1995), Dina’s Dalca (New Straits Time, 1996 to 1998) and I Am Muslim (www.malaysiakini.com, 2005 to 2006), which is now a book published by Silverfish Books.   She writes on religion, society and lifestyle issues, and is known to inject ‘a zany sense of humour’ in her writing. 

She was also the recipient of the British High Commissioner Chevening Award in 1998 and came home to Malaysia in 1999 with an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University.

Gongkapas Communications was set up in June 2011 for editorial and educational projects and consultancies that Ms. Zaman and her friends undertake.