Global Speakers

Manprit Singh is IBM Watson Enterprise AI Architect and mentor. He has been an integral member of the IBM Watson team since the inception of the business. He strives to help businesses realize the relevance and reality of AI. Helping customers harness the potential of Watson Cognitive platform capabilities is his focus. He consults customers in identifying use cases that have high potential of benefiting from cognitive infusion. Then helps customers build minimum viable products for those use cases and also mentors in realization of these MVPs into sustained products and offerings.
Manprit brings a broad range of industry and technology delivery experience into his current role at IBM. Before joining IBM Manprit held engineering positions at, Siemens Healthineers and Microsoft consulting. At IBM he has worked as DevOps consultant, Software Architect and Product manager for Watson IOT.

In her role, Wendy works closely with MIS senior management to formulate business concepts and strategies for Asia Pacific and then transform them into operational policies and solutions. In addition to leveraging emergent and existing opportunities for MIS, Wendy works closely with the MIS Lines of Business, Moody’s Analytics, Shared Services, and Moody’s affiliates in Asia Pacific to present a unified approach for achieving shared objectives.

Prior to her current role, Wendy was Director – Senior Product Strategist at Moody’s Analytics, MIS’ Content Division for 4 years. Her team was responsible for managing and growing Moody’s Research and Data Service business which includes formulating new products as well as exploring partnership strategies for Asia. Prior to Moody’s, Wendy
held various key strategy, sales and marketing positions in Prudential PLC, Singapore Telecoms in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Wendy is the Co-Chair of the Moody’s Asia Pacific Women’s Employee Resource Group and holds a BA in South East Asian Studies and Political Science from the National University of Singapore.

Raphael Nolden is the CEO and founder of Jaipuna, a New Zealand company which is creating an AI based private tutor for maths called Amy. Amy is different to other online math software because she understands the students and teaches them like a human. Raphael studied medical physics and history and developed a patent in medical technology before he became a lecturer of mathematical modelling. He was heavily involved in the tech startup ecosystem and sat on the board of Canterbury Angel Investors before Founding Jaipuna.

Steve Monaghan is Chairman and CEO of GenLife, a Limited Partner and investment committee member in True Global Ventures. Vice Chairman of Borderless Healthcare Mobile China, Co-Chairman of HK HealthTech Association, a Board Member of Pulse Global and a private investor in Artificial Intelligence, Life Sciences, Healthtech and Fintech.

Originally a commercial pilot, Steve has held senior corporate and banking roles in product, marketing, operations, innovation and general management. He has worked for leading corporations and financial institutions including Dell, Compaq, Citigroup, OCBC, Shinsei, DBS Bank and AIA. Throughout his career, Steve has specialized in introducing new business models, businesses and products in all major markets in Asia and has filed 6 patents in FinTech.

Steve was on the start-up team for Dell Computer, introducing Dell’s consumer business to Asia. Later he developed and executed the branded manufacturing and retail model catapulting Compaq to number one in the Indian consumer market. In banking Steve developed and patented the first mobile payments platform for Citigroup, developed a Consumer Finance Division for OCBC and led the retail bank turnaround of Shinsei Bank in Japan growing revenues USD$500M, deposits 25% and improving net income by USD$100M during a nine-month transformation. As Chief Innovation Officer for DBS Bank, Steve drove the innovation agenda focused on Intelligence, Big Data and Social culminating in the $220+M investment of DBS in IBM Watson, DBS A*Star R&D Lab and Digital Banking

Anish Malhotra is a Cloud evangelist who believes that adopting the Cloud is the only way for an organization to be ahead on the innovation curve and thus ahead of competition. As for his title he is the South East Asia Head of Customer Engineering for Google Cloud. His team is responsible for leading the pre-sales engagement of Google’s cloud offerings to customers across the region. Anish is a recognized industry executive in the areas of Cloud solutions and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). He has held various management roles at leading companies for more than 25+ years.

Jonathan is the founder and CEO of Silverpond, a machine learning and AI company based in Melbourne. Silverpond helps startups and organizations such as CliniCloud and Powercor adopt machine learning and Artificial Intelligence technology through consulting, educational workshops, hosting events and conferences, and the Silverbrane product. Working on computer vision, natural language processing, audio and predictive models on time series data, Silverpond has delivered solutions for industries spanning retail, property, advertising, energy, and healthcare.

A veteran in the IT industry with more than 30 years of experience, Yoke Sin is known to many in the industry as an informal and hands-on leader. Yoke Sin currently leads the Enterprise Business Group at StarHub, and is responsible for driving the next growth phase of the business and deepening the engagement with the enterprise community.
Yoke Sin was the CEO of Integrated Health Information Systems Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of MOH Holdings Pte Ltd. She also led the healthcare IT industry as Chair of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Asia Pacific Governing Council and was the first Asian Vice Chair on the HIMSS Board of Managers. HIMSS is the largest Healthcare Informatics society in the US and sets the benchmark for Hospital IT certification. In her prior roles, Yoke Sin was CEO of NCS Pte Ltd, moving up the ranks from Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Business Development.
In addition, Yoke Sin is Vice President of the Singapore Computer Society (SCS). She is also a Fellow of SCS and a Certified IT Project Manager (Senior). She currently sits on the Boards of the Singapore Land Authority, SG Enable, Republic Polytechnic and the National Kidney Foundation.

James Ward is a leading thinker and practitioner in the art of applying Artificial Intelligence to the challenges of business strategy, with a particular focus on marketing and distribution in Financial Services. He is the CEO of Epistemology, which is an AI consulting and products business.

Prior to that, he was the former Head of Analytics for IAG Satellite who developed group wide Artificial Intelligence strategy using the power of Machine Learning, to increase IAG’s ability to keep policyholders safe while delivering a beautiful customer experiences. James was also the former Senior Manager of Analytics for McKinsey & Company as well as former Director of Technology Advisory for Deloitte as an industry insider working with some of Australia’s largest Financial Services companies in Banking and Insurance, and as a fundamental academic researcher with the Key Centre for Advanced Computing Sciences.

Ishita is a Director with EY’s Life Science Advisory Practice.

She has over 10 years of experience in supporting Pharma/ Med Tech companies expand their presence in Asia Pacific. She has worked extensively on topics like New Market Entry, Digital Operations, Customer Engagement, Channel Management and Supply Chain Planning. Prior to joining EY, she was the business lead for DHL’s Life Science business in South Asia, where she was responsible for growing the distribution and fulfilment portfolio across India, Indonesia and Indo-China.

She is excited about the possibilities of digitally disrupting the Life Science space – creating new frontiers for research and diagnostics, better engagement for patients and efficient end-to-end operations.

Harphajan is the Chief Data Officer of AXA Malaysia, a subsidiary of the Paris-headquartered AXA Group, a worldwide leader in financial protection strategies and wealth management. Prior to joining AXA, Harphajan worked for PwC Consulting advising clients in Asia across industries in designing, developing and deploying innovative business models and advance analytics.

With a passion for innovation, digital and Artificial Intelligence, Harphajan leads some of industry’s disruptive engagements in the space of connected cars, connected health, usage-based insurance and sharing economy, hacking strategic growth across Financial Services vertical to maximize return of investments.

An avid contributor to the industry’s frontier of innovative FinTech and InsurTech technologies, Harphajan is actively seeked in identification, incubation and road-mapping of emerging technologies advancements. As a public speaker, he regularly appear at international conferences on range of Innovation-related topics including Artificial Intelligence, Digital Transformation and new emerging technologies. Harphajan have been interviewed, quoted, and featured in a variety of broadcast, print, and online publications including insurancethoughtleadership.com, information-management.com and global AXA community forums.

Gaurav Dixit is an AI evangelist passionate about driving enterprise scale transformations in decision making using AI. He has rich experience in developing and implementing data science solutions for Fortune 500 companies across the globe. He focuses on AI applications around consumers and operations in CPG and BSFI domain. He has extensive market and business acumen across developed and emerging markets – US, Europe and Asia.

In his current role, he leads clients and business for Fractal Analytics in Singapore. He has done his bachelors and master from Indian Institute of Technology (India) and University of Pennsylvania (US) respectively.

With 12 years of AI and Analytics in Financial Services, Jeffrey is now Head of FAST IT within Digital & Innovation Office APAC of BNP Paribas – providing A.I expertise and sandbox development capabilities to the businesses of the bank. Previously in BNP Paribas, Jeffrey was heading the client intelligence and development of Greater China in Corporate & Institutional Banking. Before joining BNP Paribas, he was with PwC Consulting for Chinese Commercial banks on Risk, Capital and Portfolio analytics. He begins his career with GE Money HK where he headed the MIS & Analytics team of Marketing department.

He is also the vice-chairman of Fintech Committee of French Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong, while also representing BNPP HK.

Educated with MBA from Chinese University of Hong Kong; Dual 1st honors in Bachelor of Science in Computing and Bachelor of Arts in Management with Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Drawing insight from his daughter, he is also passionate about fusing AI and Robotics in Education.

Allan is Director of the Data Innovation Programme Office at the Infocommunications Media Development Authority (IMDA). The programme office, formed at the recommendation of the Committee of the Future Economy, aims to help Singapore businesses use data analytics and artificial intelligence to grow and improve their competitiveness. Allan has previously served in other public policy roles at the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

Born and educated in France, Doan has graduated from Supelec with a master in electrical engineering. He joined Paribas in 1998 in Singapore within Corporate Banking Technology. In 2001 and after the BNP Paribas merge, he moved to head office driving various projects and leading teams within Risk And Fixed Income technology between Paris and London. Based in Singapore since 2011, he set up the APAC Fixed Income project and development team, became CIO for FXLM, Rates and ALMT technology and is currently CIO for Global Markets and ALMT technology.

For the past one and a half year, he has been championing innovation and digital transformation for investment banks in APAC, organising hackathon, partnering with various business lines on digital POCs and working on academic partnerships.

Laurence is the Director for AI Industry Innovation at AI Singapore, and is driving the adoption of AI by the Singapore ecosystem through the 100 Experiments programme and outreach activities.

A technoprenuer, Laurence has had several successful exits, the latest being Revolution Analytics where he was the General Manager for Asia Pacific. He was responsible for Revolution’s business in Asia and its Centre of Excellence for Analytics in Singapore in partnership with the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). He also conceptualized and ran Revolution’s development team responsible for putting Revolution R in the Cloud. Revolution was acquired by Microsoft in 2015.

Laurence graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with First Class Honours in Engineering, and also holds a Masters in Knowledge Engineering from NUS.

Eric Thain is currently the Managing Director Shanghai & Head of Digital China for LEWIS. Eric is a widely known marketing professional in Asia and a senior marketer with 17+ years of agency and in-house experience in developing Integrated Marketing Strategies and leading Digital Transformation projects across APAC (including a decade of in-market experience in China). Eric is a hybrid experienced business leader with profound mixed discipline experience across the marketing & digital ecosystem, primarily with focus on omnichannal digital marketing, analytics, artificial intelligence, social marketing, path to purchase modelling & e-commerce operation solutions.

In line with today’s changing marketing landscape, Eric is an Innovator, Change Agent & early expert in Digital Transformation & Innovation in the connected age, including reshaping operation & business models, new supportive technology & talent strategy. He is a recognized brand thought leader and is frequently invited as guest speaker at top marketing conferences across Asia. Eric also sits on the Board of Advisors in various Marketing Associations, advising issues that affect the marketing industry.

Dr. Dirk F. de Korne is Deputy Director, Medical Innovation & Care Transformation (MICT), at KK Women’s & Children’s Hospital, Singapore. He also holds positions as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. His implementation, research and teaching focuses on the diffusion of quality and patient safety innovations and include business process and systems redesign, human factors and ergonomics, and performance benchmarking. He holds an MSc in Health Policy and Management from Erasmus University Rotterdam and a PhD in Public Health from University of Amsterdam.

Saravanan Kumar (SK) is a technology leader specializing in incubating and inducting new capabilities into enterprise. Has rich experience in transforming large financials organization with new technology and practices. Global transformation leader and CxO advisor.

SK has a Bachelor degree in Electrical and Electronics, Masters in Human Resource Management. Certification includes MCPs, CSQA, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), ITIL, etc.,

In his current role as Global Head of Automation for Aon he is responsible for intelligent Monitoring, DevOps, XaaS and RPA/AI Platform Services.

Peter Andrew is a Director of Workplace Strategy, leading the Workplace Centre of Excellence function for CBRE across Asia Pacific. He has a vision to transform work and workplace in Asia and Pacific, helping to create beautiful places for people to work meaningfully and productively.

Peter is fascinated about Artificial Intelligence and its impact on how we work and the places we work in the future. He recently wrote a thought paper for CBRE; Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and Workplace.

Peter has qualifications in design, facilities planning and management, workplace strategy and corporate real estate and has been practicing for 25 years. Peter teaches Workplace Strategy and Workplace Change Management courses.

Vijay Chandrasekhar leads Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Infocomm Research, spanning next generation deep learning and AI algorithms, deep learning hardware and enterprise applications. Vijay also holds an Adjunct position at the School of Computer Science, NTU. He received his B.S and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D from Stanford University in computer vision. His Ph.D research led to a widely adopted MPEG standard on visual search.

Vijay’s research contributions span deep learning and machine learning algorithms, computer vision, multimedia search, augmented reality and hardware. He has published over a 100 papers in top conferences and journals, filed 7 patents (3 granted), with a demonstrated history of building innovative solutions spanning over a decade. He is an IEEE Senior Member, and was nominated for the Young Scientist Award at the national level from the Singapore National Academy of Sciences in 2017.

Irene has more than 23 years of practical experience in enabling businesses to benefit from Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Mining and big data. With a Marketing Degree and MBA specializing in Entrepreneurial Management, Irene is also involved in training business users on how to leverage on data to derive insights to achieve higher ROI on direct marketing programs, discover cross selling opportunities, derive insights in bundling of products, offering the right products to the right target group at the right time through the right distribution channels. At Integral Solutions (Asia), she has led and implemented numerous successful big data projects in various industries and has accumulated good collection of business best practices in Business Analytics and Data from different industries.

Irene is also the adjunct lecturer at NUS for a WDA-certified course entitled : ‘ NICF – Enhanced Customer Acquisition and Retention: An Information-Centric Approach’ which has received good ratings. Irene has led the national survey to explore SMEs and E-business in Singapore for MCYS. She is also the Singapore researcher for APEC’s ‘Capacity Building for APEC Women’s Entrepreneurs in the Age of the 4th Industrial Revolution’ 2018. Through her research and business projects, she has acquired a wealth of experience in relation to business issues in SMEs.

Irene is also the Vice President of Strategies & Development at Association of Small & Medium Enterprises (ASME). She is the Chairman of the SME Talent Program and the SMECentre@ASME, the latter set up by SPRING Singapore to provide more holistic and comprehensive business advisory and assistance services to local entrepreneurs and SMEs.