CEO Class, being inspired by the greatest leaders worldwide and talked about personal goals & growth

Website: https://www.ceoclass.world/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/ceo-class

Contribute: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ceoclass

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About the speaker: Mr Joe Tanner (Chief Commercial Officer, Rainmaking APAC)

Joe Tanner is Chief Commercial Officer for Rainmaking APAC, one of Asia's leading venture studios and startup incubators.

Joe has been building his own businesses since his teenage years, enjoying small successes in eCommerce, before moving to Australia in 2011 to join the corporate world focusing on customer insight, growth & innovation.  Since then he has acted as growth and venture advisor to the management teams of some of the world's biggest companies including Unilever, Bayer, Mondelez and ENGIE.

In the past decade, Joe has founded London-based startups in data analytics, events & fitness has overseen the development of 50+ corporate ventures across Europe and the USA and was personally a founder of three corporate ventures in healthy snacking, eCommerce and domestic renewable energy.  He was a founding member of innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212 in Europe, building a leading presence in London, and opening further offices in Paris, Munich and Stockholm before the company's exit to leading consultancy Capgemini in 2016.  

Prior to joining Rainmaking in 2020, Joe led Venture Capability for global insurer MetLife, covering MetLife's Asian markets from a base in Singapore where he now lives with his wife.

Joe is originally British with a degree in Politics from Durham University and is a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship and ethical business.

Website: https://www.ceoclass.world/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/ceo-class

Contribute: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ceoclass

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About the speaker: Mr Jakob Knutzen (Co-Founder & CEO, Butter)

Jakob is Co-Founder & CEO of Butter, which is a full workflow tool for facilitating online collaborative sessions. Butter has a fully remote team of 18 people spread across 10 countries. Before that, Jakob founded StreamCrux, a game streaming startup that was also built as a remote company. Previously built and scaled one of South East Asia’s largest digital agencies as Managing Director for the Indonesian office and subsequently regional Group Director. Part of an exit in late 2016. Prior to this spent several years at Bain & Co.

Website: https://www.ceoclass.world/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/ceo-class

Contribute: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ceoclass

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About the speaker: Mr Volker Heistermann (CEO of Mosaic Venture Lab)

Volker Heistermann brings to bear over 25 years of investment, business development, and innovation management experience in the USA, Germany, Greater China, and SE Asia. In 2011 Mr. Heistermann co-founded early-stage technology scouting and investment firm Yushan Ventures in Taiwan, and in 2019 he launched Mosaic Venture Lab - powered by Audi AG and Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs - to create and deliver the new realities of urban mobility and electrification.

Mr. Heistermann is currently raising a new US$ 100M Venture Capital fund focused on investments in the mobility industry and previously worked at Google, AT&T, Commerzbank, and investment bank Rutberg & Co.

He holds a B.A. in Financial Law and a Marketing diploma from the University of California. He frequently speaks at tech industry conferences, and he’s an Advisor to APEC and a member of the Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) – SAE Work Group.

Website: https://www.ceoclass.world/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/ceo-class

Contribute: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ceoclass

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About the speaker: Mr JJ Englert (Founder & Product Manager, Industry Jump) 

I live in upstate New York with my wife and daughter. I spent the majority of my professional career in the film industry, producing movies and commercials for brands like Paramount, Hallmark, and Ford.
Four years ago, I had the idea to start a tech company to solve some of the problems that I was facing in the film industry.

I went through all of the struggles of being a first-time founder: I was non-technical, I had no previous tech experience, and I had limited resources. It was a wild, and hard journey that taught me more than I could have ever hoped for. It's also the thing that led me to learn Bubble.

We had no money left to pay developers, and Industry Jump wouldn't have survived unless I could start building the product myself. So I took Gregory John's Udemy course, hit the Bubble forum, and have been addicted to Bubble ever since.

Today I work full-time as a full-stack bubble developer, while I build Industry Jump and Jumpstudios.io on the side.

Website: https://www.ceoclass.world/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/ceo-class

Contribute: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ceoclass

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About the speaker: Dr Lalit Gautam (Founder & CEO, Sensegrass)

Dr. Lalit has a degree in pharmaceutical Medicine (Pharm Doc) with an MBA in International marketing and entrepreneurship with over 12 years of startup experience. TEDx Speaker, Two times Forbes 30 Under 30 for Technology Manufacturing for India and Europe, MIT 35 Under 35. Lalit has One exit and founded 3 startups. Born and grew up in a small village of Uttar Pradesh to the most awarded Agriculture entrepreneurs in the world.

Lalit is the Founder and CEO of Sensegrass. Sensegrass is a moonshot Agri tech company solving the biggest issue of soil fertility by predicting and eliminating the excess fertilizers from the soil to help small-scale farmers grow faster and healthy.

Lalit is a public speaker as well and has spoken on varieties of topics from Future of SDGs to Civic education in the Arab world, unsustainable business model importance in startups to Human IQ vs Future of AI, etc at various platforms including UN HQ in Geneva. Lalit is the first and only entrepreneur awarded by 5 Startup residencies by giving nations.

Being a Farmer Lalit is passionate about environmental and biodiversity issues, He is a climate reality leader, Audi Environmental Fellow, Ashoka Changemaker Exchange, Bosch fellow. Nominated by PM for Climate leader as well.

About the speaker: Mr Mark Hsu (Founder, 11th Fleet)

Mark Hsu is a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur and investor in Taiwan. His professional experience spans education, information technology and venture capital. As a founder, he was a co-founder of notable companies such as Sina and KKBox. As an investor, he has been an active angel investor and is Co-Founder/General Partner of Pinehurst Advisors Fund 1 andGD1 Fund 2. Across the two funds, Mark has over 30+ early-stage tech companies under his portfolio, including MaiCoin, Taiwan’s largest crypto wallet & exchange, CaCaFly, a leading digital media group in Taiwan and e27, the leading Southeast Asian tech media group.

Outside of technology, Mark has also founded numerous education companies and is a thought leader in the realm of international education and educational technology. His current passion is running 11th Fleet, a company helping foreign companies soft-land in Taiwan and Taiwanese companies step out of Taiwan.

He received his B.S. in Biological Science from Stanford University

About the speaker: Mr Wander Meijer (Executive Director, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden)

Wander is a senior executive with 25+ years management experience in businesses and NGOs in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. He started his career in the Netherlands, and moved after 6 years to Asia, where he worked for TNS, a global research firm, as Managing Director for Hong Kong, China, the Philippines and Singapore, and then was four years CEO for Latin America.

From 2015 to 2021, Wander was Director Asia Pacific for GlobeScan, a global environmental consultancy.

Since November 2021, Wander leads Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden as Executive Director, where he and his team of 250 staff work on biodiversity, wildlife rehabilitation, organic farming, reforestation, sustainable living and holistic education with the vision to harmonize our (human) relationship with nature.

Furthermore, Wander is business advisor of and impact investor in social enterprises in Africa, Asia and the Netherlands.

Wander has a master’s degree Development Geography and Economics with as main subject: ‘Why are some countries rich and others poor?’ and what can we do about it! Specifically, how can we change our current economic model and human behavior to better live within the ecological boundaries of the earth.

About the speaker: Mr Bo Discarga (Founder, Betterteem) 

Before founding Betterteem, many people knew Bo Discarga as an employee experience leader to companies such as Bank of America, Startek, Accenture, Quantrics, and JPMorgan Chase. He helped these companies identify the pain points of employee experience in their organization and develop a sustainable plan to improve people's morale and engagement to affect overall business delivery.

Bo spent more than ten years managing employee engagement and experience in the Philippines BPO sector. Having worked in different organizations with different employee demographics, he firsthand experience how challenging it is to define the true meaning of Filipino employee experience. To date, there is no benchmark data that will precisely set out the definition of the Filipino employee experience. Though the systems created decades ago by Gallup and IBMKenexa were reliable options to measure employee satisfaction, they have no specific benchmark data to establish the true meaning of the Filipino employee experience (in the BPO sector). Over the years, employee engagement and experience models have drastically changed more quickly than such megaliths could adjust for, which opened the door to Betterteem.

Specialities: Organizational Development (OD), Change Management, Performance Management, Employee Relations, People Experience, Corporate Social Responsibility, Employer Branding, Human Resources, Marketing, Corporate PR, Newsletters, MediaRelations, Business Development, Social Media, Project Management, Budget Management, Philippine Labor

About the Speaker: Mr Jojo Flores (Co-Founder Plug and Play Tech Center)

Jojo is Co-Founder at Plug and Play Tech Center, a Silicon Valley based early stage investor and technology startup accelerator, which he started in January 2006. Plug and Play accelerates over 2,000 tech startups yearly from all around the world in 20 countries in 35 global offices, which access a network of over angel investors, venture capital firms, and over 520 large corporations. Since inception, Plug and Play startups have been able to raise in excess of $9 billion in funding. Plug and Play Ventures have over 1,500 companies in its portfolio, with over 20 unicorns including PayPal, Dropbox, Lending Club, N26, Soundhound, Honey, Guardant Health, among others.

In the Philippines, Jojo is Co-Founder of Launchgarage, which started operations in March 2016. Patterned after Plug and Play, Launchgarage is an accelerator and investor in tech startups in the Philippines and the ASEAN region. Jojo currently advises startups in the country, including PearlPay, Tangere, Taxumo, Magpie, Mober, Galileo, among others.

In addition, Jojo serves as a Board Member and Vice-President in the Science and Technology Advisory Council to the Philippine government and leading universities, helping them bridge technology entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley. He is also a Board of Trustee at De La Salle Lipa. As well, a board member at Animo Labs-ICAST of De La Salle University.

Jojo completed his BS Business Administration studies in 1989 at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

About the speaker: Mr Darnel Francois (Co-founder, Study Space & Draper Startup House)

Hailing from the Twin island Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago, Darnel Francois is a tech entrepreneur on a mission. While building his own edtech startup Study Space, he also pours his tech business acumen and relationships into other startups as an advisor. This passionate vision to see other startups thrive and the Caribbean turn into a startup hub has led to pivotal partnerships with Draper Startup House and Ventures.

This is a long way from his amateur start in business being paid to help set up desktop computers at 11 for friends and family and selling printed song lyrics and custom playlist CDs in high school. Darnel runs a digital agency with his best friend to bootstrap operations and is currently formalizing his product manager skills via Bootcamp education.

The reimagining of how education is delivered and the future of remote work and is at the heart of all that he does hence his grit in taking on the gargantuan challenge faced by Study Space.

Study Space is an AI driven learning management system that proposes to transform education access nationwide in developing countries and emerging markets.

It aims to create a clear path for students to learn, up-skill and be employed.

Join him as he reimagines the learning journey and tech in the Caribbean!

About the speaker: Ms Camila Sáenz (CEO & Co-founder, TUTEEMI)

Camila Sáenz is the CEO and co-founder of TUTEEMI, an online and in-person tutoring platform that connects foreign language tutors with Taiwanese students. Currently, she is a Ph.D Business Management Student and Adjunct Instructor at MingChuan University. Camila is an entrepreneur with a history working in the media production industry. She sold hundreds of copies of her first photobook, unDifferent, before finishing her MBA.

Camila is a Public Speaker with experience in Strategic Public Relations Planning in the Diplomacy Sector, Event Coordinator, and Leadership. She has won 9 years of fully funded scholarships to study for her bachelor’s and Ph.D Degree. Back in her home country, Guatemala, she volunteered to lead house construction for people living in extreme poverty for 4 years. Camila speaks English, Spanish, and Chinese. She believes that languages are the main door to every opportunity you will ever desire.

About the Speaker: Mr Felix Lee (Co-Founder & CEO, ADPList) 

Felix is the co-founder and CEO of the global mentorship platform, ADPList. He's a product designer and tech entrepreneur on a mission to bring equity to the world through purposeful designs. His focus spans across product, design, and growth. He's been featured on Forbes, Tech in Asia, Straits Times and YahooNews.

About the speaker: Ms Katrina Lee (CEO and Co-Founder, Savour!)

Katrina Lee is the CEO and Co-Founder of Savour!. Savour! is a youth-led tech startup based in Singapore started by a group of NUS, SUTD, and SMU undergraduates in August 2019 and the platform was launched in August 2020. Savour! aims to reduce food waste and food insecurity while also empowering organisations with savings via digitalisation. To date, Savour! has over 3000 platform listings, over 500 customers, and over 200 merchants onboard. Savour! has won a few awards and has been featured in several media publications such as The Straits Times, Channel News Asia, Business Times, and more.

About the speaker: Ms Omkwan Wechayachai (Founder, CREAM Bangkok)

Omkwan is the founder of CREAM Bangkok, a creative literacy centre for children that inspires the love of learning and engages children in literacy in the most exciting ways. She has a background in Literature and Children's Books Illustration and had an experience working as a kindergarten teacher for 8 years prior to CREAM. Omkwan has always been curious about the possibilities of creating a meaningful learning experience for children and CREAM was her unique solution.

About the speaker: Mr Wayne Wee (Co-founder, Breathonix)

Wayne is the co-founder and the Head of Strategy and Business Development of Breathonix, a MedTech startup that develops breath tests for disease detection. He has always been passionate about startups and entrepreneurship - At the young age of 15 years old, he was selected to take part in the Harvard ArtScience program. He further pursued entrepreneurship through NUS Overseas College (NOC) where he worked in a deep tech startup in Silicon Valley.

About the speaker: Ms Jessica Liu (Founding member, Planto)

Planto helps financial institutions utilize big data and market validated tools to build hyper-personalised and engaging digital platforms for clients, building loyalty and increasing their bottom line. Our products and team originate from Planto’s flagship based B2C arm, where our products have ranked #2 on App Store (finance category), higher than all banking apps, and serve over 400,000 millennials on a monthly basis. Planto's currently works with banks, digital investment managers and consumer finance fintechs in multiple markets.

Jessica is one of the founders of Planto. Prior to Planto, Jessica was a private equity and financial advisory professional. Born in Singapore and originally from Taiwan, Jessica grew up in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, and has experience working with multiple markets in Asia. She is active in several women’s advocacy initiatives, especially in the realms of fintech and financial inclusion. She is a member of Women in Tech HK, Moxie Future and used to be the lead singer of a post-rock band.

About the Speaker: Mr Alexander Ying (Founder & CEO, DRESIO)

Alexander Ying is the Founder & CEO of DRESIO, an AI company dedicated to merging camera-based edge AI and exercise science to detect exercise skill levels and prevent injury. In less than a year from inception, Alex has led the company to acquire the IT & Smart Tech Award for the One Million Dollar Startup Competition from Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, and become one of the winners of the IPHatch Startup Competition 2019/20.

About the speaker: Mr Lavine Hemlani (Founder and CEO, Xccelerate)

Passionate about pioneering advanced technology education to empower individuals, enterprises and workforces with 4th industrial revolution skills.

Founder and CEO of Xccelerate, a leading ed-tech and future of work company headquartered in HK with a regional track record. Xccelerate is founded on the vision that the greatest opportunity for improving lives is education. Xccelerate addresses the colossal talent and skills challenges in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics Process Automation (RPA), Software Engineering, FinTech and Design. With 10,500+ alumni, Xccelerate drives transformative outcomes for individuals, enterprises and governments by leveraging expert instructors, proprietary curriculum and learning software.

Lavine serves as Vice President of the Artificial Intelligence Society of HK, Board of Directors of the 24 Hour Race, the largest movement against modern slavery, President of Founders Circle, an eco-system of high-impact entrepreneurs, Board Member of Clearbot, an AI start-up fighting ocean collapse and climate change, and Non-Executive Director of RH-Software, a marketplace tech platform for empowering high-potential talent. Lavine began his career in investment banking in NYC at Lazard’s Mergers & Acquisitions division and held investment roles at Atlas Capital, Marwar Capital, Union Park Capital and Thread Genius (acquired by Sotheby’s).

About the speaker: Mr. Felix Tan (Founder, Skilio)

Felix is the Founder & CEO of Skilio, an edtech startup that measures and tracks soft skill development in youth. He is passionate about the space of youth development and education. As a student entrepreneur, he won the Singapore chapter of the Global Student Entrepreneur Award organized by the Entrepreneur’s Organisation in January 2020.

Felix also represented Singapore in the global finals of the Startup World Championship in Montreal and is the Silver Awardee of the National Youth Entrepreneur Awards organised by the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE).

As a lead trainer at Reactor School, a leading provider of entrepreneurship education to youth from 13 to 24, Felix has clocked over 300 training hours, equipping youths in Southeast Asia with entrepreneurship skills. In his spare capacity, Felix also volunteers to mentor youth in areas of entrepreneurship and soft skills development.

About the Speaker - Mr. Abdullah Al-Ghwairi (Co-founder, 9afi, Jordan)

Abdullah Al-Ghwairi , Co-Founder for the first peer-to-peer educational platform in the mean reign for university students (www.9afi.com). Found his passion early in Leadership, management, and Entrepreneurship as an Executive vice president to the first ASCE student chapter in Jordan, where the team got the Honorable mention as one of the top third American Society of Civil Engineers ( 2018/2019) student Chapters Worldwide. Also, he is the Co-Founder for the first one-stop-shop for the art of Arabic calligraphy in the mean region, won several grants and competitions along with Incubation in several Jordanian incubators (www.kendaart.com)

a Civil engineer who graduated from The University of Jordan in 2019, with a 6th rank on his graduation semester, and works as an Innovation and Strategy officer into one of the leading engineering consulting firms in the water and environmental sector (www.sajdi.com)

About the Speaker - Mr Kevin Lee (Chief Product Officer, eBay Korea)

Kevin Lee, Chief Product Officer at eBay Korea, is responsible for the overall vision and strategy of products and services for Korea’s largest e-commerce company operating under Gmarket, Auction, and G9. In this role, Kevin oversees the team of design, product, and engineering to drive innovation initiatives and deliver great products to extend the market leadership.

Previously, Kevin was Vice President and Head of Design at Visa, Inc, responsible for setting the vision to help designing digital products and Visa’s design system has been recognized by Fast Company for 2017 Innovation by Design Awards. Prior to Visa, Kevin led the design studio at Samsung responsible for the overall product strategy and launch of Gear Fit. Kevin was also responsible for the global design team at eBay and Paypal, as well as Whirlpool Corporation designing and launching consumer products with CES awards. Before Whirlpool, Kevin led a global team at GE Healthcare launching Vscan where it was named by TIME magazine as The 50 Best Inventions of 2009.

About the Speaker - Zofia Kierner (Founder & CEO, Girls Future Ready Foundation)

Zofia Kierner is a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy, an award-winning social entrepreneur, education and gender equality advocate, one of Vogue's top social activists. She founded and personally manages Girls Future Ready Foundation, an educational organization that spotlights the power of young women and runs multiple international projects.

Zofia has a passion for activism and public speaking as she delivers talks at conferences, appears in press, radio, and TV programs.

About the Speaker - Mr Adrian Warr (CEO Hong Kong & Taiwan, & Market Growth Thailand, and APAC Head of Employee Experience, Edelman) 

Adrian Warr leads Edelman Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as the newly formed Thailand office. He is a communications consultant whose work in New York, London and Hong Kong with some of the world’s best consultancies has given him experience in corporate, crisis, branding, marcomms, employee engagement, public affairs and digital marketing. 

Adrian has been lucky enough to work with amazing people whose names he will happily drop at the first opportunity, including the leaders of companies like HSBC, Cathay and Mars as well as individuals such as Kofi Annan, Cherie Blair and Princess Christina of Spain. 

Over the years his clients have included Samsung, Google, Coca-Cola, Tencent, Pepsi, Cathay Pacific, United Airlines, BAA, Warner Music, CLP, MTR, London 2012, The UN, Wrigley, KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, EY, GE, American Express, ArcelorMittal, DLA, KPMG, and Boston Consulting Group. 

After years of foolishly attributing his few successes to talent, Adrian is now fully aware of his white, male privilege and has become committed to addressing gender inequality, both personally and professionally. He is Co-Chair and a founding member of The Male Allies, a charity which aims to leverage the influence of male business leaders to achieve gender parity in the workplace. 

He also works pro bono for The Women’s Foundation and regularly speaks and writes on gender. Adrian is also on the board of The Hong Kong International Literary Festival. An Oxford graduate in modern languages and literature, Adrian has a BA and MA in French and Italian. Which is, admittedly, of limited use in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand.

About the speaker, Mr Olli Vallo (CEO, Education Alliance Finland)

Olli Vallo is the CEO of Education Alliance Finland, an organization specialized in pedagogical evaluation and certification of learning solutions. Olli has MSc in Education and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Helsinki. He has worked in the Educational Technology field since 2012 and has a background in education and teaching before moving to the EdTech field. Olli has hosted keynote presentations and workshops in international education events and fairs. Through the work of Education Alliance Finland, Olli has had an opportunity to dig deep into the pedagogical design and learning efficacy of hundreds of educational solutions globally.

About the speaker, Christian Foddis

Christian is Chief Executive Officer Asia of Ferragamo Hong Kong Ltd, overseeing Salvatore Ferragamo’s distribution in the ASIA Region for all Channels (DOS, Wholesale, TR and Digital). Prior to this, he was Chief Executive Officer, Greater China of Ferragamo.

He currently serves as BOD member of the Italian Chamber of Commerce of Hong Kong & Macao and has served as Vice-Chairman for several years.

Before joining Ferragamo in 2007, Christian was Managing Director of V.F.G. Hong Kong Ltd, the subsidiary of Valentino Fashion Group for Asia Pacific. Prior to that, he was Country Manager of Italfashion UK, subsidiary of Marzotto S.p.A., based in London with responsibility for the Northern European markets of the group.

Born in Rome, Italy, Christian holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from KWG St.Gallen, Switzerland and a Master’s degree in Sociology - Business Administration and Organizations from “La Sapienza” University Rome, Italy.

Christian strongly believes in the relevance of continuous learning and education and has participated to various Executive courses with Clariden, Insead and the London Business School; he is an active member of YPO (Young President Organization), a leading lifelong learning organization, where he serves as Pan Asia Chapter Chair and in the Regional Board as Vice-learning and network Officer.

He speaks Italian, English, German and French. He is married, has one daughter and they reside in Hong Kong since 2004.

In his free time Christian loves to ride his (noisy) bike, listening to (very) loud music, enjoying contemporary Art, playing golf and supporting various Charities. He is an active member of Rotary.

About the host, Sonya Wong

Sonya is the founder of Marketing Match, a tech start-ups’ go-to place for digital marketing strategies and solutions. Marketing Match operates in the Asia-Pacific region and the UK and their clients are facing unlimited opportunities in these dynamic and fast-growing markets.

Before founding Marketing Match, she was a digital marketing consultant with a rich and diverse background in online marketing for e-commerce, Fintech, HRtech, and many local brands.

Sonya currently works with tech start-ups in APAC and the UK and has shaped the online marketing strategy of firms in these markets as well as overseen the product launches and digital transformation of firms in Hong Kong.

She leads her dynamic team at Marketing Match and uses all the tools of growth hacking including SEM, SEO, UX optimization and CRO expertise for tech start-ups to thrive. The lean and agile way in which they operate makes the team at Marketing Match perfect for tech start-ups.