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.

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 joined Invesco in 2013 as CEO, South East Asia & Head of Emerging Markets Group. He leads the firm’s business activities across the region and investment strategy in all asset classes across emerging markets. Jalil is a member of Invesco’s Global Investment Committee, responsible for investment strategy, product development, corporate governance & talent development.

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 in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics.

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. 

Ronnie del Carmen joined Pixar Animation Studios in 2000 and has been an integral mind behind many of the studio’s most beloved films, including Inside Out, Up, and Ratatouille. He most recently worked as the co-director alongside Pete Docter on Inside Out, which in 2016 won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.

Del Carmen attended the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, where he earned his 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. Occasionally he would dabble in comic book work and continues to self-publish his work.