Dato’ Abdul Rahman Ahmad is the Group Chief Executive Officer of CIMB Group Holdings Berhad (“CIMB”) and Chief Executive Officer of CIMB Bank Berhad effective 10th June 2020.

Prior to joining CIMB, he was the Non-Executive Non-Independent Chairman of Sime Darby Berhad and Velesto Energy Berhad.

He has more than 20 years of leadership experience across multiple industries where he held Chief Executive Officer positions in well-established organisations such as Malaysian Resources Corporation Berhad, Media Prima Berhad, Ekuiti Nasional Berhad and Permodalan Nasional Berhad.

He holds a Masters of Arts in Economics from the Cambridge University, United Kingdom. He is also a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and the Malaysian Institute of Accountants.  

Alina is the Co-Founder and CEO of Arus Academy, a social enterprise that empowers others through relevant & meaningful education. She represents Arus & Malaysia at various national and international events to share on innovation in education. Her passion for achieving equality in education has been the main engine of Arus’ growth since its establishment in 2014. 

With about 10 years of teaching experience below her belt, Alina has poured her knowledge into innovative content development, and teacher coaching with a focus on high-need schools and marginalised communities including the stateless community in Chow Kit. 

She has a degree in Actuarial Science from the University of Illinois and a post-graduate diploma in Education from Universiti Utara Malaysia. Prior to Arus, Alina was in management consulting. 

Alvin and his wife, Angela set up What A Waste (WaW) with the main mission of fighting food waste while feeding the poor in a sustainable fashion. Both came from an architectural background and are the individuals behind the trending WaW’s highly impactful initiatives. Alvin was a member of Malaysian Mensa at the age of 16 and he went on to complete his architectural studies in University of Tasmania, Australia with an emphasis on environmental designs. He was deeply involved in a multitude of affordable housing schemes in Malaysia and abroad where sustainability was a key consideration in his design approach. Four years ago, Alvin departed from his high-profile corporate portfolios and dedicated his life fully to advocating for good environmental practice. Today, Alvin is a regular face in various universities inspiring the next generation for this phenomenal cause. The WaW team has to-date rescued some four million kg of surplus food from going to the landfills, preventing massive amount of greenhouse gasses from entering our atmosphere and fed thousands of marginalised communities and underprivileged families.

Bill is most associated with the re-development of the Codman Square area of Boston, a multi-cultural community which foundered in the 1970s and became an area known for racial unrest and economic disintegration. Bill was founding CEO of the Codman Square Health Center, a major factor in the regeneration of the community, and founding president of Codman Academy Charter School.  He has been President and/or CEO of health care organisations for 42 years. He has worked internationally on community regeneration efforts and health in South Africa and Vietnam, and was involved in the Irish peace process. He serves on numerous boards of directors, mainly focused on education and community development. He has received numerous awards for his work and ideas. 

Chris has been with Bridgespan for over a decade and currently leads Bridgespan’s growth in Southeast Asia. He has worked on social issues across the United States, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, serving organisations such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Audacious Project, TPG’s The Rise Fund, Temasek’s ABC Impact, Project ECHO, the Tenure Facility, and the African Leadership Group plus a number of UHNWIs and family offices. His topical experience includes education at all levels, public health/healthcare, livelihoods, equity and justice, and climate/environment.

He has co-authored articles on impact investing and philanthropy in Caixin, Harvard Business Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review while also being quoted as an expert in many global publications.

Christine Tsai co-founded 500 Global in 2010, and led the firm’s growth from a startup accelerator to a multi-stage venture capital firm with $2.8B in assets under management, and more than 2,600 investments in 81 countries. 500 Global regularly ranks as one of the most active venture capital firms in the world, according to PitchBook, with a top number of exits. Private Equity International has named Christine one of 10 Women of Influence in venture capital.

She currently serves on the venture capital committee of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers, the Global Tech VC Council of the Global Private Capital Association, and is an active member of the Young Presidents’ Organisation. Prior to founding 500 Global, she held product marketing and operating roles at Google.

Christine holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Feng Chucheng is a founding partner at Plenum Research, an independent research firm that helps financial institutions and multinational corporations understand the political and economic trends in China and how they will move the market. Chucheng conducts research on China’s political and policy developments. Previously, he worked at Blackpeak and Eurasia Group, where he advised global investors and corporations on Chinese politics’ impact to their businesses. Chucheng holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree in political science from Columbia University.

David Rooney is a writer, historian and curator. His most recent book, About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks (Penguin and W. W. Norton, 2021), was named a Smithsonian Best History Book of 2021. He is currently writing his next book, The Big Hop: The First Non-Stop Flight Across the Atlantic Ocean and Into the Future. Rooney was formerly Curator of Timekeeping at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and Keeper of Technology and Engineering at the Science Museum, London. He is currently a research associate at Royal Holloway, University of London; a Council Member of the Antiquarian Horological Society; and a Liveryman and Past Steward of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, a London livery company founded in 1631.

Eric Cheng co-founded Carsome, Southeast Asia’s largest integrated car e-commerce platform, in 2015. With his combined knowledge in accountancy, business development, digital marketing and strategy, he leads the overall strategic direction of the business across multiple verticals and expansion strategies. Carsome has since expanded from Malaysia into Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore with more than 3,000 people employed across all its offices.  

Faisal is a Director at Sunway Group’s Digital and Strategic Investments arm. He founded BorderPass, building the world’s first immigration autogate equipped with facial recognition and contactless fingerprinting, reducing queueing times to just seconds for visa-free travellers at KLIA2. BorderPass won eight international awards, including the Asian Entrepreneurship Award and APEC’s Digital Prosperity Award. Prior to BorderPass, Faisal worked in investment management at JPMorgan, CIMB and Public Mutual, in London, Singapore and KL, with stints at the World Bank and United Nations. A MERCY Malaysia volunteer since 2001, he has served in conflict zones (Afghanistan, Lahad Datu), and environmental disasters (Sri Lanka, Kelantan, Typhoon Haiyan). Faisal studied Law at the University of Cambridge, and Columbia University, on a Fulbright scholarship. His photography (www.faisalariff.com) is a front to hoard vintage camera lenses.

Florence Tan is the Deputy Chief Technologist for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and supports the Chief Technologist to survey, assess, and strategise on technology needs for NASA’s science. She also chairs the Small Spacecraft Coordination Group at NASA Headquarters and leads and coordinates NASA’s strategy and vision for small spacecraft in science, exploration missions, and technology activities. Previously, Florence Tan worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on eight mass spectrometers to Mars, Saturn, Titan, and the Moon. Her awards include the NASA Medal for Exceptional Achievement, Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement for Outreach, NASA Honor Award Silver Achievement Medal, and others. Florence Tan holds a BSEE (Computer Engineering) from University of Maryland, MSEE and MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Hanna Alkaf is the author of critically acclaimed novels for kids and teens, including The Weight of Our Sky, The Girl and the Ghost and Queen of the Tiles. She graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and spent over ten years writing everything from B2B marketing emails to investigative feature articles, from non-profit press releases to corporate brochures, before finally delving into fiction. Hanna is a Freeman Award winner, a Kirkus Prize finalist, one of the co-founders of the #KitaJagaKita movement, and most importantly, a mom of two. Her next books are the YA magic school anthology The Grimoire of Grave Fates and the MG fantasy Hamra & the Jungle of Memories, both publishing in 2023.

Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at SOAS University of London. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he has published 16 authored books (five co-authored) and 11 edited books. His main books include The Political Economy of Industrial Policy, Kicking Away the Ladder, Bad Samaritans, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, and Economics: The User’s Guide. His new book, Edible Economics – A Hungry Economist Explains the World is to be published in October 2022. His writings have been translated and published in 44 languages and 46 countries. Worldwide, his books have sold over 2 million copies. He is the winner of the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize and the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize.

Ida is the Acting CEO of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Foundation (YTAR), a statutory body set up by the Tunku Abdul Rahman Foundation Act 1966. The aim of YTAR is to empower young Malaysians aged 16 to 25 especially those from B40 communities to achieve their aspirations and become the next generation of Malaysian leaders. Previously, she co-founded Closing The Gap (CTG), a mentoring programme that empowers bright, under-represented students to enter higher education. Since 2019, CTG has been folded into YTAR. Prior to that, Ida worked in the Alumni Impact team of Teach For Malaysia Foundation (TFM), where she supported TFM’s network of Alumni leaders. She is also an Acumen Malaysia 2020 Fellow. Ida hails from Kuching, Sarawak. 

Dr Jay Desan co-founded BoomGrow because she believes that clean greens should be accessible to all. BoomGrow is a fast-growing tech farming company on a mission to transform farming by producing 100% clean and nutritious goodness, introducing trust and traceability back into the food system through patent pending Machine Farms. 

Passionate about food and sustainability, she has over 15 years experience in Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) advisory and a PhD in standards of sustainability. She sits on the curriculum panel of multiple public universities, advising on AgTech.  

BoomGrow was recently inducted into the global FoodTech 500 list, the world’s first definitive list of companies at the intersection between food, technology and sustainability. 

Jupe is overall responsible for Plug and Play’s Asia Pacific operations with a focus on Southeast Asia. He joined Plug and Play in 2008 and was responsible for starting its first international accelerator program in Silicon Valley and also led its early expansion into Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Plug and Play APAC works with multinational corporations, conglomerates and government agencies in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Prior to Plug and Play, Jupe worked for National University of Singapore (NUS) as Program Director of NUS College in Silicon Valley, where he was responsible for managing the Silicon Valley operations for NUS.

Jupe holds a BA in Economics from National University of Singapore.

Katrine Marcal is a bestselling author on women and innovation. Her first book Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? has been translated into more than 20 languages. Margaret Atwood called it “a smart, funny and readable book on women, economics and money”. It was named one of The Guardian’s books of the year in 2015. BBC also named Katrine one of its 100 Women in 2015. 

Katrine works for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. She has given keynotes at institutions such as Oxford University Business and Economics Programme, London School of Economics and The Royal School of Technology in Stockholm. In her role as a financial journalist, she has interviewed many of the world’s leading economic thinkers. Some of her interviews have been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.  

Katrine’s second book Mother Of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored In An Economy Built For Men became a bestseller in Sweden in 2020 and will be published in several languages during 2021 and 2022. 

She lives in the English countryside with her husband and three children. 

Lya Rahman is the Adviser to IIC and chairs the SIP, established jointly by IIC and CMM. She is a member of IRSC of MIA, ICGN GNIA and ICGN GSCN; and was the judge for the ICGN Global Stewardship Awards for 2018 & 2020. Prior to that, she spent 18 years with MSWG and actively raised corporate governance issues at the PLCs’ general meetings.  

Lya was the ASEAN CG Experts representing Malaysia and headed the ASEAN CG Assessment for Malaysian PLCs from 2012 until she left MSWG in 2019. 

Lya Rahman is very passionate on Corporate Governance and shareholder activism matters and her articles were published in the StarBiz, The Edge Financial Daily and FocusMalaysia. She frequently speaks and participates as panellists at both local and international platforms. Prior to joining MSWG, she held various positions at the senior managerial level with various organisations and has been exposed to various businesses, diverse cultures and management styles. 

Marko is a Partner and Chief Strategist at Clocktower Group. He leads the firm’s Strategy Team, providing bespoke research to clients and partners on geopolitics, macroeconomics, and markets.

Marko founded BCA Research’s Geopolitical Strategy practice (GPS) in 2012, the financial industry’s first dedicated political analysis investment strategy. The GPS service generated geopolitical alpha by identifying gaps between the market’s political expectations and the firm’s forecasts. He helped create the Center for European Union Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Marko holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA from the University of British Columbia.

He is the author of Geopolitical Alpha: An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future.

Nathan Lane is an Associate Professor of Economics at University of Oxford and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He is a co-founder of SoDa Labs at Monash University, where prior to Oxford, he was Senior Lecturer of Economics. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. His research focuses on industrial policy and the political economy of industrial development.  

Nor Shamsiah Yunus is the Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM). As Governor, she chairs BNM’s Board of Directors, as well as the Monetary Policy Committee and Financial Stability Committee. She assumed office on 1 July 2018.

Shamsiah joined BNM in 1987 and has led and served in various functions across the Bank including financial regulation and supervision, financial intelligence and enforcement, talent management, and finance. She also played a key role in resolving problem financial institutions during the Asian financial crisis. She had also previously represented BNM at international platforms such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and Financial Action Task Force.

Prior to her appointment as Governor, Shamsiah also served at the IMF.

Nurhisham Hussein is Chief Strategy Officer of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), covering the areas of corporate strategy, policy, communications, sustainability, and transformation. He had previously served at EPF as Head of the Economics and Capital Markets Dept, overseeing economic surveillance of over 20 economies across the globe. He joined EPF after a stint with Malaysian Rating Corporation Berhad (MARC) and Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB).

Nurhisham holds a BSc in Monetary Economics from the University of London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Masters in Economics from Universiti Malaya.

Patrick Cao currently serves as President of GoTo. He is responsible for overseeing corporate development, investor relations, investments, strategic partnerships, synergy integration and ESG activities of the Company. 

Patrick has been a member of the leadership team at Tokopedia since 2016 and was responsible for the finance department, financial technology business and partnerships for Tokopedia and its subsidiaries. 

Before joining Tokopedia, Patrick was a Principal at Formation 8. In this role, he focused on diversified technology investments in Southeast Asia. Prior to Formation 8, Patrick was an Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank, specialising in mergers, acquisitions and capital markets advisory. 

Prashanth began investing in Indian technology start-ups much before they acquired global attention. He started his investing career as co-founder of Erasmic. Prior to that, he co-founded NetKraft. At Accel his primary focus is on online marketplaces, B2B and SaaS. He has led investments in 30 Indian technology start-ups & serves as a board member in 16 companies. He has lead seed or early stage investments in category-defining companies like Flipkart, Ola, Swiggy, Urban Company, BookMyShow, Cult, Freshworks, Bluestone, Blackbuck, Portea, Proptiger, Inframarket and Bounce.

He is actively involved in social entrepreneurship ventures that work to improve education and the quality of environment in our country. He serves as Co-Founder of ACT Grants, Chairman of United Way, Sikshana Foundation, KrishiKalpa Foundation.

He holds Master’s in Computer Science from University of Delaware, B.E Computer Science from Bangalore University & Doctor of Science from Mysore University.

Quyen is the Director of Impact Investing at BlackRock and Head of Fundamental Equities Sustainable Investing Research. Her research creates BlackRock’s core criteria for impact investing across asset classes and best practices in measurement. She is a Professor of Impact Investing at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a member of Harvard Business School’s Alumni for Impact Initiative. Quyen has served on working groups at the Global Impact Investing Network and the Impact Management Project. At Cambridge Associates, Quyen advised endowments, foundations, and other institutions on investment strategy.

She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and BA, cum laude, in philosophy from Mount Holyoke College where she was awarded the J.M. Warbeke Prize in Philosophy.

In his 27-year career with Procter & Gamble and Shell, Rahul has led several multi-billion dollar, global businesses as P&L head, and helped shape the destiny of several global brands. He has lived and worked in Singapore, India, Japan, Switzerland, the US and the UK. Rahul is a passionate historian and economist. Married with two children, he enjoys reading non-fiction, music, hiking, and cooking. His personal passion is to inspire organisations in the private sector to be more purpose driven, leveraging their expertise and resources to make a real difference to the people and ecology of the planet. 

Sanjeev Krishna is a Professor of Molecular Parasitology and Medicine at St. George’s, University of London. On completing a degree at Cambridge and a medical degree at Oxford, he studied malaria in Thailand before completing a DPhil at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004 and awarded an ScD by the University of Cambridge in 2007. He is a scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO). He chairs the Infectious Disease Advisory Committee of QuantuMDx, and is a scientific adviser to Global Access Diagnostics (GADx) and Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), a not-for-profit organisation promoting the development of new diagnostic tools for resource-poor countries.  

Stefanie Stantcheva is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard and founder of the Social Economics Lab. She is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2018, she is a member of the French council of Economic Advisers (CAE).

She studies the taxation of firms and individuals, as well as how people understand, perceive, and form their attitudes towards public policies. Her work has centered around the long-lasting effects of tax policy – on innovation, education, and wealth. Stefanie has also explored people’s attitudes towards taxation, health care, immigration policies, environmental policies, race, and social mobility using large-scale Social Economics Surveys and Experiments.

Stefanie is the recipient of an NSF Career award, the Elaine Bennett Research Prize in Economics, the Calvo-Armengol international prize in economics, the Maurice Allais Prize in Economics, the Best Young French Economist award, a Sloan Fellowship, and a Carnegie Fellowship. She is co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Yolanda Augustin is a Malaysian oncologist with a special interest in global oncology. She did her medical training at Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas School of Medicine before undertaking clinical oncology training at the Royal Marsden. She completed a PhD focused on developing affordable diagnostics and therapeutics for cancer in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) and co-leads a global oncology programme at St George’s, bringing together interdisciplinary experts from academia, global health and industry, with collaborations in Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Senegal. Current projects include drug repurposing for cancer, pipeline development for cancer drug biosimilars, affordable point-of-care diagnostics for cervical screening and advocacy to remove barriers to equitable access and cancer service delivery in low resource settings.