Global Speakers

Daniel Sherrington is the Asia Pacific Regional Director at O.C. Tanner, the world’s leading service provider of Employee Engagement programs. He is responsible for developing the overall business growth strategy in new markets.
With over 12 years of experience working with local and international organisations in this region, Daniel has helped companies build great workplace cultures, enhance employee value proposition and improve customer service experiences. Previously, he served as the General Manager and Head of Sales at a major WPP agency in Singapore.

Daniel is passionate about animal welfare and regularly volunteers with homeless animal charities in his free time.

Patrick Tay is the Assistant Secretary-General of NTUC. He is currently the Director of NTUC Legal Services Department, as well as the Future Jobs, Skills and Training Department. He is the Executive Secretary of The Singapore Manual & Mercantile Workers’ Union. He currently chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for Manpower and also co-chairs the Financial Sector Tripartite Committee with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Patrick has represented numerous unions and union members in dispute resolution, conciliation and in the Industrial Arbitration Court. He also represents the Labour Movement in tripartite workgroups to review and update employment and industrial relations legislation.

Ridwan is a Data Scientist at Kraft Heinz. He currently is dabbling in analytics methodologies that can be applied to Talent Management and Employee Performance. Having worked in both analytics consultancies as well as in-house HR teams, he understands where analytics can provide the best value for businesses. In this talk, he will delve into three areas analytics have helped Kraft Heinz elevate their employee experience.

With 20 years’ experience in the IT industry, Mao Gen Foo has worked with many clients across industries in Asia to help solve business challenges leveraging IT solutions.

Mao Gen is currently the Head of Southeast Asia for Qualtrics, who is the leader in experience management software, allowing organisations to measure, prioritise, and optimise the experiences organisations provide across the four foundations of business: customer, product, employee and brand experiences. Mao Gen is based in Singapore, which is the Qualtrics head quarters for the Southeast Asia region. Mao Gen’s responsibility is to establish and grow Qualtrics across this region.

Dylan Choong is the Regional Vice President for Sephora South East Asia, and leads the people strategies for one of the fastest growing & most innovative omni-channel beauty retailer in South East Asia. Dylan’s focus in Sephora is to attract talents to fuel Sephora’s growth, to develop high quality talents to outperform competition through enhanced developmental experiences, and to retain high-value and high-performing employees through partnering them in achieving their career aspirations.
Prior to Sephora, he was the director of human resources at Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels & Resorts – then Starwood’s largest international division spanning 290 operating hotels and 75,000 associates across 17 countries in Asia Pacific. There, he led Starwood Asia Pacific to award achievements in employee engagement and career development, setting Starwood Asia Pacific apart as an employer-of-choice with more than 25 awards and accolades won.
Before Starwood, Dylan was a change management practice consultant with Swiss Management Forum, and was the head of learning and development for Fullerton Hotels & Resorts. He is also a trained architect, and holds an undergraduate qualification in business management (with distinction), postgraduate qualifications in learning and development as well as an MBA (honours roll) from Cornell University.
Back in 2015, he was recognised by Workforce as a game changer in 2015 – an award that represents some of the best HR practitioners and strategists dedicated to pushing the profession forward with innovative people-management practices.

Mr. David Litteken has worked in the Total Rewards and Performance Improvement industry for 30 years, focusing on the world of recognition, incentives, motivation, loyalty, and events.

David joined BI WORLDWIDE in May 1994. David served as Division Vice President of BIW’s Healthcare and Employee Performance Groups in the United States. David brings extensive leadership experience with a focus on client service and a reputation for personal commitment and involvement in exceeding customer expectations.

David served as Managing Director of BIW APJ & China to manage the business from offices in Shanghai and Singapore in 2012. He was promoted to Vice President for the Asia Pacific-Oceania Region in July 2016 and now resides in Singapore.

He also served for three years as President of Edina A Better Chance, a non-profit educational organization that recruits minority youth with academic promise from across the United States to pursue educational studies at one of America’s leading public high schools. In addition, David has been on the Boards of a Minneapolis-based youth homeless organization (Oasis for Youth), the University of Missouri Alumni Association, and Recognition Professionals International.

He is a compassionate leader focused on an engaged workplace, and delivering operational excellence and business results for BIW’s clients.

Gary Lee is the Global Head of Leadership and Organisational Development with Sivantos. As a seasoned facilitator and talent developer with over 15 years of experience in L&OD, talent management and consulting, he has worked with companies from diverse industries in the areas of Talent Development, Leadership, Change Management and Corporate Strategy.
Prior to his current designation, he was the chief HR specialist for a Danish MNC where he designed and implemented a global talent program for over 18,000 employees. He was also the Regional Head of Training of a consultancy firm with presence across seven countries in APAC where he concurrently held the position of director of a group of learning centres. He then went on to become the Head of Learning & Development, HR Business Partner for a SGX listed company where he led many L&OD projects to increase the firm’s readiness for IPO listing.
MBA qualified & accredited with various psychometric tools, he has developed and implemented numerous talent initiatives and facilitated for over 250,000 participants globally.

Purva Hassomal manages Gallup’s Learning & Development across Asia Pacific and is responsible for ensuring the quality and delivery of all learning interventions for Gallup’s clients in the region.
Purva’s mission is to build capacity within client organisations to improve bottom and top-line performance through effective and high quality learning solutions and leadership development. Her work helps organizations build engaged workplaces, measure individual contributions, and align employees’ roles with their talents. She also helps managers understand and implement best practices that engage employees and customers and increases productivity, profitability, and retention. In addition to managing and delivering learning programmes for Gallup’s clients, Purva delivers Gallup’s Certified Accelerated Strengths Coaching and High Performance Management public courses in Asia-Pacific.
Prior to joining Gallup, Purva was MD for an Oil & Gas boutique consultancy based in Dubai, UAE, dedicated to serving the needs of Oil and Gas professionals across the MENA and Asia Pacific region, through a range of learning & development solutions and events addressing technical, career and training issues. With over 10 years’ experience in Learning & Development, Purva has also produced a number B2B conferences, workshops and training sessions throughout her career, with clients ranging from Fortune 500 organisations and family-owned conglomerates to government and non-for profit bodies, across financial services, real-estate, energy, retail, automotive, marketing and education.
Purva received her degree in Communications & Media Studies from Brunel University in the UK, and is bi-lingual in English and Spanish.

Global Change Management Strategist, Microsoft Real Estate & Facilities. Main Focus is on Workplace Change Management, Strategy, Design and Transformation
Moira has 22 years’ experience in Real Estate, 12 years working for Microsoft in various roles within the Real Estate & Facilities Division.
Recognized as someone who get things done. Driving stakeholder value and guaranteeing customer satisfaction is a passion, together with pushing the boundaries to create bold outcomes.

Mukta is a Human Resources professional with 21 years of post MBA experience in corporates in India, Hong Kong and Singapore. Her HR experience has been in different industries- Power,Agrotech, Financial Services, Media and Advertising. At present, she is Head of HR for SEA and Regional Head of People and Talent Development Asia-Pacific in Societe Generale, a French bank, headquartered in Paris. Apart from the HR generalist role for SEA, she is also responsible for learning,development and talent management strategies for the group in Asia. She writes in her spare time and has 3 published books till now- 2 books on poetry and one on her impressions of Hong Kong.

Sudhanshu Tewari is the CEO of Rewardz, a mobile-first technology company that provides digital incentives to help companies build strong relationships with their employees, clients, sales teams and more, while aligning behaviours with corporate values to drive a high performance culture.
Along with his co-founders, Nicole Seah & Jaya Maru, Sudhanshu established Rewardz in 2012 and bootstrapped it to become one of the largest players in employee rewards and recognition solutions across South East Asia. Recognized for its best employee engagement solutions and exemplary HR & management consultancy services, Rewardz currently has 120 clients across 11 countries and serves more than 250,000 users.
Sudhanshu hails from a banking background with over a decade of experience with reputable investment banks. He has served as Vice President at JP Morgan and played executive roles at RBS and Credit Suisse where he was instrumental in implementing bank-wide trading platforms. His corporate experience makes him well qualified to understand how large organizations operate and how to drive productivity using innovative employee engagement tools.

Darrin Marshall is Gallup’s Principal Consultant for S.E Asia. Based in Singapore he works closely with Senior and Executive Leaders to identify underlying business problems and develops solutions to counteract them through strategic human capital initiatives. Darrin uses his expertise in Gallup’s CliftonStrengths science and Behavioral Economics in supporting executives to be the best managers and leaders they can be based on their unique talents.

Manik Narayan Saha is the CIO for SAP Asia Pacific and Japan. Based in Singapore, Saha leads a global multinational and multicultural IT organization. As part of the senior leadership team in APJ, he is responsible for SAP’s internal IT services to 28,000+ staff in the region.

As companies rapidly move to a digital agenda, Saha works closely with the leadership team in APJ to execute on enabling SAP as a Digital Enterprise. In November 2017, he led the team to successfully implement SAP’s first finance machine learning scenario globally using SAP Leonardo.

With 19 years of experience and expertise in technology, Saha is a prominent keynote speaker at events, and provides thought leadership on a wide range of topics ranging from IT Strategy, artificial Intelligence, digitalizing operations, process excellence and enterprise innovation. He serves as an executive sponsor and advisor to several large clients of SAP in the region.

Saha is a member of the INSEAD Alumni Network and a Regional Ambassador of the INSEAD Directors Network (IDN) for Singapore. He was also the founding fellow and is currently serves as a Vice-President for Ideation Edge Asia, a non-profit organization.

Saha has a degree in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), a Masters in Applied Finance from the Singapore Management University, and a Certificate in Corporate Governance from INSEAD.

Neetha is passionate about creating enriching and inspiring people practices and workplaces that enable individuals and organisations to achieve their goals. In her role as Head – HR Centre of Excellence at Prudential Singapore, she is responsible for driving a customer centric employee experience. Her role includes aligning people practices with the company’s values and improving organisation effectiveness across talent management, performance, rewards, learning & development, people analytics and change programmes.

With over 16 years of experience as a HR practitioner and consultant, across industries and geographies, she specialises in large scale business transformation, change management, embedding new agile ways of working and talent management. Prior to Prudential, Neetha was a Director at PwC, Singapore for 10 years and led the HR transformation practice. She was based in PwC, New Zealand for a year and returned to Singapore early this year.

During her free time, she loves to run, travel, spend time watching movies with her family and learning Indian classical dance with her 8 year old.

Neetha holds an MBA in Human Resources and a Bachelors in Sociology (Honours).

Shakil is part of the Customer Service & Support Leadership Team and leads Resource Strategy and Vendor Planning (RSVP) globally. Shakil and his team are responsible for managing and optimizing talent development, resourcing, the organizational blueprint and vendor strategy and engagement across CSS globally. Shakil has a passion around building support model capabilities that drive business growth, reactive support prevention and multi-modality automation driven solutions for customers and partners end-to-end experiences.

Shakil joined Microsoft in 2001 and spent his first 10 years with Microsoft in the product groups in Redmond where he held a number of engineering leadership roles in the Windows and STB organizations. He moved to Asia in 2011 when he joined CSS and has worked in the Strategy & Operations, Commercial Customer Support and SMS&P Support organizations. Shakil also led the Consumer Support Asia Time Zone, CSS Japan Area and most recently served as the CSS Asia Lead for the Commercial support business. In these roles, Shakil led implementing Service Delivery Transformation in Asia, time zone delivery alignments and a subsidiary engagement model framework.

Before joining Microsoft, Shakil worked in Seattle for Creo/Kodak and Japan for Macnica as a software developer developing video mail and pre-press software. He holds an Engineering degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing and a diploma in Chinese and Japanese languages. In his spare time, he enjoys playing cricket and other sports, reading and attempting to set up home automation systems.

Sanjay Sharma is currently working as World Wide Director for Microsoft and responsible for all Microsoft support sites across the globe, Geo Strategy and Business continuity.

Sanjay is a highly-experienced leader, who has led diverse teams to deliver outstanding success in highly competitive industries across range of markets. His diverse business experiences span across General management, P&L management, Services Sales & marketing, Quality/Six Sigma (Certified Master Black Belt & Quality Leader), Change management, Strategic planning & execution & Operational Excellence.

Sanjay has proven record of accomplishments to successfully analyze critical business requirements, identify gaps and potential opportunities to develop & deploy programs for business growth & market competitiveness, with “Customer Always First” Mindset.

With a strong passion for all things Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding, Benjamin is celebrating over 18 years of regional experience building strategic recruitment practices and operations with multinational technology companies in Asia.

In 2017, Benjamin joined Motorola Solutions, an industry leader for mission critical communication solutions, and has led the transformation of the Talent Acquisition team across APAC. Under his leadership, Motorola Solution won the “Best Employer To Work For In Asia Award” in 2017. In addition, Benjamin was instrumental in leading Motorola Solution’s Talent Acquisition team to win 3 Gold Awards & 1 Silver Award at the Asia Recruitment Awards in 2018 in Singapore & Malaysia.
Prior to his current role, Benjamin held similar roles in top technology companies such as Tata Consultancy Services and IBM.
Beyond work, Benjamin’s love for people has him volunteering at elderly events and helping ex-offenders reintegrate into society.

Charu joined the Bank in March 2016 and is the Talent Acquisition Head for Technology, Operations and Enterprise Control Functions in APAC. In her role, she partners closely with LOB Executives and HR to develop and deliver Talent acquisition strategy, manage regional executive hires, as well to execute on key priorities aligned to business objectives.

Prior to joining the Bank, Charu worked with organizations like KornFerry, Intel, Goldman Sachs, PwC and American Express.

Phil studied finance and accounting at University of Salford, and went on to qualify as a management accountant shortly after. He has worked for various retail, FMCG, and tech companies over the last 20 years, with 8 years spent working for Amazon, where he held various finance roles and learned about scaling a business. His most recent role was leading finance for Amazon’s European Operations, before joining Deliveroo in early 2016 as Group CFO where he spent 2 years as part of executive team. Since leaving Deliveroo he continues his passion working for founder led companies that can scale quickly, joining Reach Robotics in June 2018 as CFO.  In addition he continues to work with six companies as a board member across various industries, one of which Arctic Shores is a leading HR tech company.

Fiona Carney is Senior Director of Business Operations for Asia at Microsoft. Her background is in Consulting, where she worked with KPMG and Accenture in Business Strategy and Change Management for over 10 years. In 2007, Fiona joined Microsoft and has worked in numerous roles and led functions of the business- including Customer Experience, Sales, Operations and Account Management. She has worked with Microsoft partners for her entire career at Microsoft in EMEA and globally. Currently she leads a large cross functional organization supporting the business in Asia. Fiona sits on the Diversity & Inclusion Council for APAC and is passionate about development of people and ensuring a diverse workforce.
Fiona has spent time mentoring small businesses, and has done voluntary coaching and mentoring with NGOs (US, Mexico and Ireland). She is a qualified Executive Coach specializing in performance improvement, and personal development. She has been very active in sponsoring the mentoring & coaching culture at Microsoft.

Fiona holds a B.Comm from UCD, a Masters in Business Studies from University College Dublin, Ireland, a Post Grad diploma in Marketing, and Diploma in Executive Coaching. She is currently studying for a MSc in Coaching.

With over two decades of designing and delivering of courses and experiences, speaking, and, most importantly, real-life, in-the-trenches business practice obtained across six continents, Marco’s view is different. Marco appreciates and shares with listeners that excellence is a choice and can be achieved every day, in every culture. It’s how we should live our life.

Marco has been connected with some of the most powerful global brands for several years. He is a certified FourSight™ and Kauffman FastTrac™ Facilitator, a Partner of the Training Factor network and continues animating connections and conversations with the best and the brightest in HR, business, leadership and innovation. Marco is also an active guest lecturer at several Universities including Stanford (Palo Alto), Fudan (Shanghai), Yonsei (Seoul), LUISS (Rome) and the Polytechnics of Milan and Turin.

Prior to his consulting efforts he was involved in managing the global office of PwC, where he has also been the initiator and manager of the global leadership development program for high potential partners.

Stephan Amling is a President at SLK Software, based out of Singapore. As a member of SLK’s leadership team, he is looking after SLK’s product business globally and is also responsible for SLK’s business in Europe. He considers himself a pragmatic visionary who is making digital business transformation happen.
Prior to this role, Stephan was a Senior Vice President at SAP in various roles, including the practice lead for HR Transformation in Asia and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for SAP’s global Human Resources function. In the latter role, he led SAP’s HR business transformation journey towards an organization that was running all HR processes in the cloud with SAP SuccessFactors.
He is combining 30 years of management consulting with his expertise and innovative thinking in HR as well deep practical experience in cloud-based HR technologies. On that basis, Stephan is passionate about helping organizations to develop an ambitious people vision while actively supporting them in the execution of their digital transformation journeys while delivering on their initial objectives. Throughout his career, he was concerned with holistic business transformation in rather complex and large-scale environments, leveraging state-of-the-art technologies to generate real business impact and to make tangible business change happen.

Sam is currently the Founder and Chief People Officer of People Mentality Inc, a Human Resources (HR) and Employer Branding consultancy firm set out to advocate a people-first mindset to help organizations become an Employer of Choice. By using authentic and compelling stories, Sam seeks to work with organizations to build a strong employer brand from within.
Sam is a HR professional with accelerated experience in market leading companies such as Keppel Corporation and Changi Airport Group. His burning passion for HR has seen him take on a diverse range of roles in areas of Employer Branding, Talent Management, Business Partnership, Talent Acquisition and Employee Engagement among others.
Besides securing MOM’s National Human Resource Scholarship in 2011, Sam’s contributions in the HR community was also recognized and in turn, awarded as one of the HR Rising Stars in 2016.

As a millennial HR thought leader, he has been invited by various conference producers to speak at their events, including the HR Summit and HR Tech Summit. In addition, Sam has also been invited to share his insights as an HR and Millennial expert on national TV and radio channel as well as being featured on major publications such as The Business Times and Straits Times.

Rachel leads HP’s Talent Acquisition for APAC as well as 3D Print globally. In her role, she is responsible for leading a large geographically diverse team focused on finding top talent for HP. Rachel in addition, drives many key strategic talent acquisition initiatives both across the region as well as globally. Rachel is a regular conference speaker and is recognized as a thought leader in Asia on talent acquisition.

Rachel is based in Singapore, she joined HP in late 2015 from Deloitte Consulting. In addition to living in Singapore, she has previously lived and worked in Japan, Hong Kong, China, the UK as well as the US. Rachel has a degree in Law and spent a year in China studying Mandarin at Fudan University.

Frank Koo is the Head of Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan at LinkedIn and is responsible for LinkedIn’s Talent and Learning business. Frank’s organization supports companies in talent acquisition, development and retention through LinkedIn platform and solutions
Prior to LinkedIn, Frank was the Chief Operating Officer of BE Education. He has also held leadership roles in Pearson Education where he was President of Learning Solutions in APAC, and Oracle where he was Managing Director for Singapore and South Asia Growth Economies.
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/koofrank/

Karl Mak is the CEO and Co-Founder of Hepmil Media Group. Hepmil Media Group runs the popular digital content platforms  such as SGAG & MGAG, whose content is seen by over 10 million millennials across the region weekly. Hepmil Media Group started in 2015 with just 2 co founders and is currently over 70 man strong across 3 counrtries. Karl was recently named in Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30, class of 2017.

Jonathan is the Executive Director of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation, and Adjunct Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Singapore Management University. He educates and nurtures change-leaders across the region on social impact projects and pioneered SMU’s accreditation as Asia’s first Ashoka Changemaker Campus.

As a global public speaker, Jonathan has given lectures and talks to thousands of people. His TEDx talk at Harvard about the importance of a mission-driven life was featured on Voice of America. Prior to his career in academia, Jonathan founded and co-founded four tech startups across sectors in Silicon Valley and Manhattan. He continues to advise, mentor, and invest in social ventures.

Jonathan is a graduate of UC Berkeley, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He received Stanford’s Miller Social Change Leadership Award, Harvard Law School’s Digital Problem Solving Initiative Fellowship, and Columbia’s The Earth Institute Fellowship. He received the prestigious EFMD Case Writing Award for his research on a Balinese social enterprise. Currently, Jonathan serves as an elected member of HKS Alumni Board of Directors and as Harvard Kennedy School Alumni Ambassador to Singapore.

Yoke Fei is Senior Director of Human Resource & Corporate Administration at Gardens by the Bay (GB). In his role, he’s responsible for developing and leading strategic people initiatives to keep GB in the forefront among similar niche employers. In addition, he is also responsible for legal and corporate services.

Prior to GB, he held leadership positions in HR, as well as legal & corporate services in several public-listed companies in a diverse range of industries including investment holdings, land transport, leisure and hospitality, information technology, shipping and business process outsourcing in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

He firmly believes that empowering HR is the foundation for business success and has featured prominently as speaker and panelist in various international level HR conferences. Yoke Fei also contributed actively as a Volunteer HR Director in support of Spring Singapore’s Human Capital Movement for SMEs. GB was the winner of the “SME Employer of the Year Award” in the recently concluded HRM Awards. In 2017, HRM also awarded GB with the “Best Work-Life Balance Award” while HRD magazine recognized GB with the Gold Award for Employer of Choice and the “Best HR Team Award”. He is a professional member of the Singapore Human Resources Institute and the Singapore Institute of Directors.

Marieke is a versatile HR leader with over 15 years of experience in HR and Change Transformations in MNCs and management consultancy. She is currently Regional HR Director South Asia for AkzoNobel and based out of Singapore. In her previous role she was HR Director Global Functions at AkzoNobel HQ and joined the company as HRBP for one of the business units. Prior to AkzoNobel, Marieke worked at Kingfisher as Global HR Manager based out of Hong Kong. Before her in-house HR career, Marieke was a management consultant with Towers Perrin, currently known as Willis Towers Watson, based out of Amsterdam, London and Hong Kong. She holds a Masters in International Business and a Master in Law and speaks English, Dutch (native), German and French. Currently she is pursuing her coaching certification with Co-Active Coaching.