Building Our Collective Brain

A well-recognised media executive and an award-winning music producer, Izham started his career heading the legendary Positive Tone label, producing progressive music with artists like Faizal Tahir, Innuendo and Too Phat. Izham also launched 8TV, Fly FM, Hot FM and tonton, a breakthrough video streaming service. He was CEO of Media Prima Television before his current role as CEO of Primeworks Studios. Izham wrote Pulang, a Netflix Original. 

A recipient of Enterprise Asia’s Most Promising Entrepreneur and Voice Of Independent Music’s Lifetime Achievement awards, Izham is also Chairman of the Communications and Multimedia Content Forum, Vice-Chairman of the Malaysian Film Producers Association and Music Authors’ Copyright Protection, Director of Music Rights Malaysia and a Trustee for Yayasan Perpaduan Malaysia.

Alina is the co-founder of Arus Education, an award winning social enterprise focusing on tech education and teacher development. At Arus, she leads the design and strategies of its programs. She was involved in the development of teacher modules and teacher training for the latest national syllabus for computer science for both primary and secondary level. She works with marginalized children in national schools and undocumented children in alternative learning centers providing innovative learning experiences that uses technology as a medium. 

Before starting Arus, Alina was in management consulting and then taught for 4 years in a national high-need school. She has a degree in Actuarial Science from University of Illinois and a post-graduate diploma in Education from Universiti Utara Malaysia.  

Tunku Alizakri is the Chief Executive Officer of the Employees Provident Fund of Malaysia (EPF), a post he held since 20 August 2018.

He joined the EPF on 1 January 2014 as Deputy CEO for Strategy Division, overseeing national policies on social protection He was also responsible for corporate strategy, corporate affairs, human capital and talent development.

He is also an ex-officio member of the EPF Board and Investment Panel, which are respectively responsible for overseeing the EPF’s operations and presiding over all investment recommendations in accordance with EPF governance and risk controls framework.

Tunku Alizakri holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Law (LLB) from King’s College, University of London. He has been admitted as an advocate and solicitor in the Court of Malaya and has qualified as a Barrister (Lincoln’s Inn) in the courts of England and Wales.

Carl Benedikt Frey is Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at Oxford University where he directs the programme on the Future of Work at the Oxford Martin School. He is author of The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor and Power in the Age of Automation.

In 2012, Frey became an Economics Associate of Nuffield College and Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, both University of Oxford. He remains a Senior Fellow of the Department of Economic History at Lund University.

Frey has served as an advisor and consultant to international organisations, think tanks, government and business, including the G20, the OECD, the European Commission, the United Nations, and several Fortune 500 companies. He is also an op-ed contributor to the Financial Times, Scientific American, and the Wall Street Journal, where he has written on the economics of artificial intelligence, the history of technology, and the future of work.

Chen Zhao is Founding Partner and Chief Strategist of Alpine Macro. From 2015 to 2016, he was Co-Director of Macro Research at Brandywine Global Investment Management. Prior to Brandywine Global, Chen spent 23 years at BCA Research. 

As a Principal, Managing Editor and Chief Global Strategist, Chen developed and wrote BCA’s China and Emerging Markets publications in the 1990s. Chen became the firm’s Chief Global Strategist in the 2000s and was the author of BCA’s flagship publication, Global Investment Strategy from 2005 to 2015. 

He holds an MA in economics from the Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China, was a visiting scholar at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and pursued post graduate studies with a PhD candidacy in economics at McGill University.

Dr. Zhou founded XY Investments in 2014 together with renowned finance professors and senior quant portfolio managers. Since inception XY has won numerous awards and become the flagship for China fundamental quant funds. Prior to founding XY, she was a key researcher at BGI’s cross-strategy group, overseeing global scientific equity portfolios. After BGI, she worked a senior consultant at AQR’s global equity research team.  

Dr. Zhou is actively involved in academics. She has taught at UC Berkeley HAAS School of Business and continuously published in top tier academic journals such as Review of Accounting Studies and Journal of Corporate Finance. She is also a frequent speaker at various international academic conferences. 

Cindy holds a PhD in Finance/Accounting from Tulane University. 

Francesco is the Deputy Department Director at OFCE, the Research Center in Economics of SciencesPo Paris. He holds PhDs in Economics from Columbia University and La Sapienza of Rome. His research focuses on the relationship between inequality and macroeconomic performance and European macroeconomic policies. He published in several international journals. 

In 2000-02 he was member of the Council of Economic Advisors for the Italian Prime Minister’s Office. He teaches international and European macroeconomics at SciencesPo, where he manages the Economics concentration of the Master of European Affairs and in Rome (Luiss). He is Academic Director of the SciencesPo-Northwestern European Affairs Program. He is member of Confindustria`s Scientific Committee, and of the Scientific Board for the LUISS School of European Political Economy.  He is active in the institutional dialogue, and in the public debate, on the EU. He advises the ILO on macroeconomic policies for employment. Twitter: @fsaraceno.

Professor Harvey Whitehouse is Chair of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion at the University of Oxford. He is also a founding fellow of Oxford’s Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflicts and a founding director of SESHAT: Global History Databank.

Whitehouse is well known for his theory of “modes of religiosity”, which explains how the frequency and emotional intensity of collective rituals influence the scale and structure of religious organisations. Much of his research examines how social cohesion can be used to motivate cooperation, including self-sacrifice for higher causes. His books include Inside the Cult, Arguments and Icons, and Modes of Religiosity.

Jalil Rasheed has recently been appointed as President & Group Chief Executive of Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB). 

Jalil was previously the Chief Executive Officer, South Asia for Invesco. He led the firm’s business activities across the region and investment strategy in all asset classes across emerging markets. Jalil was also a member of Invesco’s Global Investment Committee & Global Management Committee.

Prior to joining Invesco, Jalil spent 10 years with Aberdeen Asset Management in various investment leadership roles. His last position was CEO of Aberdeen Islamic Asset Management, based in Kuala Lumpur, where he established and managed the firm’s investment desk and developed the overall Malaysian & global shariah business. 

Jalil graduated with a BSc (Honours) in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics.

James Crabtree is a Singapore-based author and journalist, and an Associate Professor of Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His best-selling 2018 book, “The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age” was short-listed for the FT / McKinsey book of the year. 

Prior to academia, James worked for the Financial Times, most recently as Mumbai bureau chief. He is now a columnist for Nikkei Asian Review, and a fellow at the Asia-Pacific programme at Chatham House. 

James has written for a range of global publications, including the New York Times, the Economist, Wired, and Foreign Policy. Prior to journalism he was an advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. 

He has worked for various think tanks in London and Washington DC, and spent a number of years living in America, initially as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. 

Jayati Ghosh is Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has authored and/or edited a dozen books and more than 180 scholarly articles, most recently Demonetisation Decoded: A critique of India’s monetary experiment (with CP Chandrasekhar and Prabhat Patnaik, Routledge 2017), the Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development (co-edited with Erik Reinert and Rainer Kattel, Edward Elgar 2016) and India and the International Economy, (Oxford University Press 2015).

Her research output has been recognised through several national and international prizes. She is the Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates, an international network of heterodox development economists. She has advised governments at different levels, including as Member of the National Knowledge Commission reporting to the Prime Minister of India, and consulted for several international organisations. She writes regularly for popular media like newspapers, journals and blogs.

Jomo is Senior Adviser at Khazanah Research Institute. He was in the 5-member Council of Eminent Persons and is in the Economic Action Council appointed by Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Professor at the University of Malaya (1986 – 2004), Founder-Chair of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development (2005 – 2012), Research Coordinator for the G24 Intergovernmental Group on International Monetary Affairs and Development (2006 – 2012), Assistant Director General for Economic and Social Development, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (2012 – 2015) and third Tun Hussein Onn Chair in International Studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia (2016-2017). He received the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. 

Dr. Henrich is a Harvard Professor, the Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and has been granted academic tenure in four fields, including Economics, Psychology and Anthropology. His research deploys evolutionary theory to understand how human psychology gives rise to culture and how this has shaped our species’ genetic evolution. He’s conducted long-term fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, rural Chile and the South Pacific, as well as having spearheaded several large comparative projects, while researching a wide range of topics, including cooperation, fairness, innovation, religion, marriage, learning and prestige. In 2016, he published The Secret of Our Success and, forthcoming in 2020, look for THE WEIRDEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD: how Westerners became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. 

Laura is the founder and managing director of the Longevity Fund, an early stage venture capital fund focused on extending healthy human lifespan. After years working on nematode longevity at the UCSF graduate school, Laura matriculated at MIT at 14 and 2 years later participated in the inaugural Thiel Fellowship class. Since then, she has built Longevity Fund and AGE1, funds focused on helping start and fund longevity companies. Longevity Fund companies have collected >$500M in follow-on funding, resulting in the 2018 IPO of the first company dedicated to reversing the diseases of aging, and multiple programs in clinic to reverse or prevent age-related disease.

The Honourable Minister, Mr. Lim Guan Eng is the Minister of Finance of Malaysia and the Member of Parliament for Bagan as well as the State Assemblyman for Air Putih.  Prior to assuming his current role, Mr. Lim Guan Eng was the Chief Minister of Penang from 2008 to 2018. 

The Honourable Minister served as a Senior Executive in banking industry before being actively involved in politics with the Democratic Action Party (DAP). He has served as the Secretary-General for DAP since 2004. Mr. Lim Guan Eng was born in 1960 and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Accountancy from Monash University. 

Michael is a Senior Partner of McKinsey & Company. 

Michael is one of the global leaders of the firm’s Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice and co-leads McKinsey’s work on CEO excellence. He also serves on the McKinsey Global Institute council, which advises on MGI’s research on global economic, business, and technology trends. 

Michael is a governor of the Royal College of Art and a member of the King’s Business School advisory board. He has been a trustee of the World Schools Debating Championships and the UK–US Marshall Scholarships programme. In 2016, Michael was elected a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Based in London, Michael previously worked in San Francisco and Mumbai.

Munib Madni is the Founder (2018) and CIO of Panarchy Partners. He spent over 13 years at Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM) where his roles included: Portfolio Manager in the Emerging Markets Team; Chief Investment Officer Asian equities; Co-PM Active International Allocation strategy. His investment career began 25 years ago as a junior fixed interest PM, followed by various PM positions, including at Aberdeen Asset Management in Sydney. 

At MSIM, as CIO he was involved with the integration of ESG into investment processes and strategies. This experience shaped his belief that sustainability must be redefined and incorporated at the core of the investment process. He has Pioneered the “Panvesting” philosophy, whereby investors need to respect and expect returns/progress on all forms of capital: Human, Social, Environmental and Financial. He is: Bachelor of Business (First Class Honours), LLB, CFA. Family, running marathons and jazz help to balance his life with career.

Nathan Nunn is the Frederic E. Abbe Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Professor Nunn’s primary research interests are in political economy, economic history, economic development, cultural economics, and international trade. He is currently a co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics. His research focuses on the historical and dynamic process of economic development.

In particular, he has studied the factors that shape differences in the evolution of institutions and cultures across societies. He has published research that studies the historical process of a wide range of factors that are crucial for economic development, including distrust, gender norms, religiosity, norms of rule following, conflict, immigration, state formation, and support for democracy.”

Nicholas Bloy, Managing Partner – is one of the three founders of Navis Capital Partners. Navis currently manages USD 5 billion in private and public equity funds.

Mr Bloy leads investment teams in making, monitoring and exiting investments, sits on Investment Committee and sits on the boards and/or executive committees of several Navis portfolio companies, and is responsible for fundraising. He also sits on the International Advisory Council of CIMB, one of the Southeast Asia’s largest banking groups.

Prior to co-founding Navis, Mr. Bloy worked at The Boston Consulting Group in Asia from 1989 to 1999 after spending 3 years with Bain & Co. In London. He holds a BA Hons degree from University College, London and an MBA from INSEAD, France

Dr. Nungsari Ahmad Radhi is an economist and is presently the Chairman of Khazanah Research Institute as well as the Executive Chairman of the Malaysian Aviation Commission. He also sits on the MARA Council.

In his career of over 30 years, he has been an academic, a Member of Parliament, a consultant, and a policy advocate and has sat on various corporate and statutory boards. His interests revolves around the microeconomics of policy making and has been a contributing columnist for The Edge since 2000.

Ronnie del Carmen is a director, writer, story artist, story supervisor and production designer. He co-directed and was one of the writers for the 2015 Pixar film Inside Out, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He was the story supervisor on Pixar’s tenth full-length computer-animated film, Up and directed its accompanying short film, Dug’s Special Mission. 

Del Carmen was born in the city of Cavite in the Philippines. After high school, he worked in the painting department on set for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which was filming in the Philippines. He graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Advertising. He moved to the United States in 1989 and worked as a storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series  and for DreamWorks as a story supervisor. He joined Pixar in 2000 and worked on Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and UP where he was in charge of the opening sequence of the life of Carl and Ellie.  

Saidah Rastam is project director of Melaka In Fact, an initiative to investigate and disseminate Melaka’s evidence-based histories. She trained as a barrister and has worked as a litigation lawyer, music producer and composer. Works include M! The Opera (KL), combining Malay traditional instruments and western orchestra, Spirits (St Petersburg) featuring Peking and Cantonese opera singers and Pulau Antara (Tokyo). She has been music director of numerous shows, including the launch of the Petronas Twin Towers. Her book on Malaya’s music, Rosalie and Other Love Songs, was published in 2014 and 2016 as part of a cultural preservation project. Saidah’s grandfather, Abdul Hadi Hasan, wrote Sejarah Alam Melayu (1925), the first history textbook used in schools written by a Malay.

Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai is Group Chief Economist and a member of senior management at Sea, the leading internet company in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Sea’s businesses include Shopee, the region’s most popular e-commerce platform, Garena, a global leader in games publishing and development, and AirPay, a pioneer in regional digital financial services.

At Sea, Santitarn heads the Research and Public Policy Unit, leading the company’s engagement with policymakers around the region, with a focus on promoting digital skills. In 2019 his first book, Futuration, which looks at how Thailand can prepare for the economy of the future, became a best-seller in Thailand.

Previously, Santitarn was Head of Emerging Asia Economics Research and award-winning economist at Credit Suisse. He has also worked at Thailand’s Ministry of Finance and at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, as well as at the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.

Santitarn holds a doctorate degree in Public Policy and a master’s degree in International Development from Harvard University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Shaun Cochran became Group Head of Research in April 2019 and is responsible for all aspects of the research product group wide. In the preceding three years he was CLSA’s Global Head of Thematic Research. In this role he coordinated with CLSA analysts globally to identify transformational themes that would drive long-term returns. Prior to this he was based in Korea, where he led the local research team from 2007-14 before taking on the broader Country Head role. Shaun joined CLSA in 2005 from Accenture where he was a business-strategy consultant, heading up Shareholder Value Analysis for North Asia financials.

Sumant is Managing Director and co-founder of LA-based March Capital Partners, as well as co-founder of two leading technology incubators in the San Francisco Bay Area: The Hive and The Fabric. Sumant leads investments in Cloud Computing, IoT, AI/ML, Network Infrastructure, and companies supporting the Indian market. He currently serves on the boards of numerous market-leading companies, including Astound, BillDesk, CarTrade, Decision Engines, IoTium, SparkCognition, Uniphore, and Xage Security.

In his nearly two decades of venture capital, Sumant has generated multiple meaningful exits in companies he has either incubated or been the first institutional investor. His exits include Velocloud Networks (acquired by VMWare), Perspica Systems (acquired by Cisco), The Rubicon Project (NYSE:RUBI), Kosei (acquired by Pinterest), Deep Forest Media (acquired by Rakuten), Kazeon Systems (acquired by EMC), Mimosa Systems (acquired by Iron Mountain), Ankeena Networks (acquired by Juniper), Cetas (acquired by VMware), and Apture (acquired by Google).

Surina Shukri brings two decades of experience working across a diverse range of companies including global multinationals, middle market companies and early stage startups across the financial services, natural resources and technology sectors. 

She spent the bulk of her professional career in the United States, including 17 years of experience as an investment banker, strategist and leader at JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest bank in the United States. There she served as Head of Strategy, Innovation & Business Management for Middle Market Banking, Head of Strategy for Commercial Banking, Chief of Staff to the CEO and Executive Director in Natural Resources Investment Banking. 

Surina left JPMorgan Chase in 2018 to start SheNovation Ventures, a transformation and growth venture studio where she advised fintech and blockchain startups on growth strategy and capital raising and consulted business leaders on culture change and transformation. 

She graduated from University of Pennsylvania’s Management & Technology dual degree program with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School and Bachelor of Applied Sciences in Systems Engineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 

Suvir Varma is a Senior Advisor to Bain & Company’s Global Private Equity business. Prior to that, he was a Senior Partner at Bain (2002-2018) and managed Bain’s Asia Pacific Financial Investor business.

In addition to his role at Bain, Mr. Varma holds the following positions:

– External Advisor to Navis Capital, a successful Asia mid-market buyout private equity firm 

– Advisory Director to Campbell Lutyens, a leading global private capital advisor 

– Board Member at Linknet, a CVC owned publicly listed company in Indonesia 

Over the last 20 years, Mr. Varma has worked extensively with leading Global and Asia-based financial investors to help them realize value across the investment value chain― from asset allocation and overall fund strategy to industry sector scans, commercial DD and portfolio-company value enhancement. 

Teng Chee Wai is the founder/MD of Affin Hwang Asset Management Berhad. Over the past decade, he has built the Company to be the fastest growing and only independent investment management house in Malaysia’s top three, with over RM47 billion in assets under management at end-2018. Teng is actively involved in investments, product development and marketing. With over 20-years’ experience, his key expertise is in managing absolute return mandates for insurance assets and investment-linked funds in both Singapore and Malaysia. 

Previously he was the Assistant General Manager (Investment) of Overseas Assurance Corporation (OAC). Teng began his career in the financial industry as an Investment Manager with NTUC Income, Singapore. He has a BSc from the National University of Singapore and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Actuarial Studies from City University in London.

Professor Datin Paduka Dr. Soo-Hwang Teo is the founding Chief Executive of Cancer Research Malaysia, a non-profit cancer research organization focussing on cancer prevalent in Asia. Prof Teo’s team leads global efforts to develop more efficient and equitable screening and prevention strategies for Asian women at higher risk of breast cancer, and the largest study of genomic profiles of Asian breast cancers, which provides critical insights into treatment and survival in Asian women. Prof Teo’s team piloted a nurse and community-led programme which has transformed the survival of underserved Malaysian breast cancer patients. For her contributions to medical research, Prof Teo was awarded an Honorary Officer of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth and the DSIS Award from Sultan Selangor.

Zainah Anwar co-founded two ground-breaking women’s groups that engage with Islam from a rights perspective to promote the rights of women living in Muslim contexts.

She is a co-founder of Sisters in Islam (SIS) in Malaysia and led it from 1999-2008. She is currently the founding Executive Director of Musawah, the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2009.

Zainah also writes a monthly column, Sharing the Nation, in Malaysia’s largest English language daily, the Star. In 2018, she was honored by Harvard Law School as one of the top 25 “Women Inspiring Change” globally in the areas of law and policy. She has been named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of the 150 women “who shake the world”, by Women Deliver as one of 100 most inspiring people in championing the rights of women and girls, and was recognized by Huffington Post as one of the 10 leading Muslim women at the global level.