THE NEXT

Calvin Soh, considered one of Asia's most accomplished creatives. Founder of One Kind House, Advisor to ofnoah.com, BHuman (sustainable waterless skincare), Castlery (furniture), OneKindBlock (hydroponics), and former Asia CCO/ ED Growth/Innovation/Adman.

Calvin was a combat engineer sergeant, a fast food chef, lifeguard, telemarketeer, traffic at Ogilvy, employee of the year, account executive, copywriter, voted no.1 by Campaign Brief Asia, Fallon NY and Mnpls ACD, Fallon Asia President and ECD, Publicis Asia Vice Chairman and CCO.

He is also an urban farmer, founded One Kind Ideas to focus on ideas that democratize good, investing in startups and starting up himself, Board of Singapore Productivity and Innovation board, consulting, training, vintage road bike enthusiast, completed L'Eroica 2013, speaker at Vegas SXSW and married, fathered and thus impervious to pain and suffering.

Uma Rudd Chia is Executive Creative Director and Cofounder of KVUR, a boutique advertising agency specialising in beauty, fashion and innovation brands.

She is a highly awarded creative having won multiple D&ADs and One Show awards, Cannes Lions, Spikes Asia, New York Fest and others and is a sought-after global keynote speaker specialising on the topics of technology, innovation, women empowerment and creativity. She has spoken at over 14 countries to over 200,000 people in total in the past 5 years at events organised by Forrester Global, Facebook, Google, She Loves Data, Pause Fest and South by Southwest.

Uma is the founder of The Female Idea, a platform she uses to advocate, mentor and champion female creative leaders.

A mother of two inquisitive 11 and 13 year old kids and two feisty fur babies, Uma has sung in two acapella albums, created her own award-winning phonics programme - Reading PANTS™ and has authored three best selling books. Her recent Kindle Best Seller, 10 Things Brands Could Do To Survive a Crisis, was described by marketers and the Straits Times Singapore as “the toolkit for brands to take positive action to survive Covid-19”. Uma just signed a book deal with Penguin Random House to write her next book, the Quirks That Help Us Conquer. This year she is was also appointed the Co-dean of Spikes Academy - Asia’s most prestigious award show.

Aalok is a General Manager with over two decades of experience in the Consumer Goods & Consumer Healthcare industry. He has lived and worked across different regions (Asia, North America, Europe) and diverse organization cultures. His diverse experiences include leading Marketing for Procter & Gamble (P&G) Babycare & Healthcare in Asia (India/Singapore), Global Vicks Brand Franchise Leader in Cincinnati & regional CMO for Europe Healthcare based in Geneva in the PGT Joint Venture.

Aalok is currently the Senior Vice-President for the P&G Personal Healthcare business in the Asia-Pacific-Middle East-Africa (AMA) region based in Singapore. He leads a Healthcare team of 100+ employees in Singapore and 1500+ employees across the AMA region. He also serves on the Board of Directors at Procter & Gamble Health Ltd (formerly Merck Ltd) in India. Aalok is originally from Mumbai, India and has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Aalok has been married for 19 years to Rameet and they have a 16 year old daughter and a 2 year old dog!

Angel Guerrero is founder, president and editor-in-chief of adobo magazine, the word on creativity. She launched adobo magazine in 2006 in her quest to serve the advertising, marketing, and creative communications industry through content that informs, inspires, and connects. Her publication, which she started in the library of her home, has in its print, digital, and experiential forms, and has won global and regional recognition and awards at the Philippine Quill Awards (an unprecedented 3 Top Awards), the Global and APAC Stevie Awards, the ADSTARs International Lifetime Achievement Award, and many more. 

Angel continues to champion creative inspiration through a series of talks, roundtables, and community events for brands and organizations, and under adobo magazine: adobo Talks, adobo Festival of Ideas, adobo Design Awards, adobo Class a in universities, and more recently the award-winning adobo SheCreative Network initiative in support of women creatives.

Named as one of the 100 Most Influential Filipino Women in Linkedin in 2021, a CEO Excel Awardee for Communication Excellence by IABC Philippines 2020, a leadership award at the APAC Stevie Awards in 2019 to mention a few.

Angel is a founding board member of the Creative Economy Council of the Philippine (CECP) and the Communication Design Association of the Philippines (CDAP), and is also a board member of the United Print Media Board (UPMG) and the Design Advisory Council of the Philippines (DCP). 

Ava Soh was 14 when she launched her brand Daughters of the Revolution on Kickstarter. It was a jewellery collection to promote self love amongst young girls based on the Loveletter biscuit. Recently she fundraised for Ukraine with a T-shirt that has a QR code linked to the NFT. It shows a young Ukrainian girl spray painting her flag in defiance. It was worn by President Zelenskyy in a speech broadcast to Asian leaders.

Currently, she’s working on more fund raising ideas whilst studying.

Cody Amos has over 10 years experience in VFX, with 25 feature film credits under his belt: Spider-Man: Far From Home, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Kong: Skull Island, to name a few!

He has worked at top VFX studios including Industrial Light and Magic and Weta Digital, and is now the Creative Director at Heckler Singapore. At Heckler he leads the artists on a wide range of projects for brands such as IBM, Apple, SK-II, James Squire, Samsung among others. His directing credits include an effects heavy project for Worksafe Victoria, a delightful cell animated spot for Loro Piana, and a weird and wacky spot for ByBit.

Derek is a creative technologist, and co-founder at NFT Peeps, an ethical NFT consultancy, and tech director at Tiny Giant, an award-winning creative AI consultancy.

Always entrepreneurial, he has started business in crowdfunding, creative AI and now NFTs for brands.

He started as a web developer in the early 2000s when Internet Explorer and Netscape were things, then became an interactive developer with Flash and HTML5. He still loves creating and experimenting with new technology, and helping others to use it too.

Ivy leads brand and audience strategy for Hilton in Asia Pacific. She is responsible for identifying opportunities to drive deeper relationships with Hilton’s customers and prospects, drive efficiency and impact for marketing activities and develop test and learn agenda around platforms, formats and content.

Prior to Hilton, Ivy worked across a variety of insights and analytics roles with Discovery, Microsoft and Prudential. She also worked with clients including Tencent, Lenovo, J&J, VISA and American Express in her roles with WE Communications and Nielsen.

Her work has been covered by Campaign Asia, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Marketing Magazine and CNET. She is on the Advisory Board for BEETc’s Martech Summit and a member of the Keynote Women’s Speakers Directory for APAC covering martech, data & insights and empowerment themes.

Kahina Van Dyke is a leading global fintech leader who currently sits on the Fortune 100 Board of Progressive Insurance, serving on both their investment and technology committees. With over 25 years of global leadership, she has an unparalleled unique set of experiences spanning Citibank, Facebook, Ripple and MasterCard executing large scale in transformation and change leadership.

While being at the forefront of fintech transformation she has become a respected leading voice with recognised institutional publications, including Economist, Bloomberg and FT, as well as academia the likes of MIT and Stanford. Named Global Leader of the year (2021), Top 15 Fintech Women in Asia (2021), Top 10 Women in Fintech (2020) and #1 Global Woman in Fintech in 2019, she has been featured in her own chapter in “Black Achievers” a seminal publication on black excellence.

As a global change agent, Kahina is a consummate innovator that operates with a leadership philosophy that focuses on growth, empathy, creativity, and courage to drive more sustainable and inclusive financial ecosystems. Her style is authentic, direct and inspiring which has led her to be a mentor, coach and supporter to many leaders throughout the industry and aspirational to the next generation of bankers.

Laurent is a creative technology leader playing at the intersection of art, data and engineering. Over the last 20 years, Laurent has worked at tech startups and agencies, delivering large-scale digital campaigns and products across Asia, Australia and the Middle-East for clients such as Nike, Uber, Google, Netflix, YouTube, Telstra, UOB and many others. The work of Laurent and his teams has been recognised at regional and global award shows.

While Laurent remains an active practitioner in fields such as generative design, new media art or creative AI, he is also a strategic leader constantly working on developing new capabilities around emerging technologies at his companies. Laurent is always on the look for the next-generation of talents either across the organisations he is working at or in collaboration with leading universities such as NYU, SMU or SUTD.

Pelle joined Activision Blizzard as Chief Creative Officer in September of 2019. Prior to joining the company, he was at BBH Worldwide where he also served as the Chief Creative Officer (CCO), overseeing the firm’s creative efforts on behalf of brands, such as Google, Nike, Samsung, Audi, E! and T-Mobile. Before becoming BBH’s CCO, Pelle founded the BBH Los Angeles operations and strategic initiatives, including the launch of The Creative Studio - BBH’s joint venture with entertainment talent manager Scooter Braun.

Prior to BBH, Pelle spent part of his career as the CEO of an advertising agency, King, as well as having a stint at Fallon in Minneapolis. He studied Art Direction & Communication at the Berghs School of Communication in Sweden. Throughout his career, Pelle has been behind an array of award-winning marketing initiatives, including a campaign on behalf of Google that was named Time Magazine’s Best Ad of the Year in 2011. BBH was awarded more than 30 Cannes Lions under his leadership, in addition to two Grand Prix Lions.

Pelle serves on the advisory council for The Women in Public Service Project, a global initiative at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC, which mobilizes young women on issues of critical importance in public service. He also works with the Creative Alliance to address gender equality and justice around the world.

Named in Creativity Magazine’s annual “Creativity 50” as well as one of “the Top 25 Most Creative People in Advertising” in Forbes Magazine, Rei Inamoto is one of the most influential individuals in the marketing and creative industry today. In early 2016, Rei, with Rem Reynolds, founded I&CO, a business invention firm that identifies new opportunities and creates best-in-class customer experiences by focusing on strategy, design, and incubation. Fast Company named I&CO one of the Most Innovative Companies in the World in its annual. In July of 2019, I&CO opened its first international office in Tokyo.

Started as a musician. Became a copywriter. Morphed into a creative director. Labelled a creative technologist. Co-founded NFT Peeps with the mighty Derek Ahmedzai. Eternally curious. Occasional award-winner. Enjoys experimenting with creative AI.

Sancia Zheng is the Global Brand head at Adidas HQ Running, continuing 2 decades of experience in brand advertising, self-start-up, and integrated marketing. With proven track record growing Adidas Greater China five-folds into a £5 billion net sales brand and 25 internationally acclaimed awards recognition on campaigns created to-date, Sancia champions transformational marketing, consumer obsession, creativity and is a firm believer of team culture.

Today, Sancia leads the global creation of communication strategies into integrated marketing solutions across brand communication, Retail, Digital, PR, Social, CRM, Communities and partners publishing. Sancia has experience across Singapore, Asia-Pacific, Greater China and Global headquarter in Germany.

Victor Riparbelli is the CEO and Co-Founder of Synthesia, the world's leading AI video platform that makes it as easy to create a video as writing an email. Prior to founding Synthesia, Victor Riparbelli has been involved in technology entrepreneurship for the past 10 years, helping to develop products across many industries. His work in VR /AR inspired him to apply similar technologies to video production. In 2017, he co-founded Synthesia with Prof. Matthias Niessner, Prof. Lourdes Agapito and Steffen Tjerrild.