Dinner with Mentors

Rich Akers has been a part of Beijing's creative industry for over 10 years. As a partner and marketing manager of iconic Beijing venues Gung Ho! Pizza, Lush, and Pyro - not to mention an ENFJ - he's a perfect marketing mentor, font of branding wisdom and cautionary tale of things not to do.

Jaime Craig is the founder of Grow Forward, which delivers people development coaching and training solutions to businesses and community organisations in Australia, China & South East Asia. Grow Forward also provides specialist training and mentoring services to youth, refugee and employment services, fostering mental toughness, well-being and emotional intelligence as well as job seeking skills and workplace social skills.

Sylvia Shuiyin Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Zamani Collection, a lifestyle brand which fully embrace the concept of #Ruglife. Under her leadership, the company expanded from a pop-up concept to three large spaces in Beijing within a year, with partners and clients in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Paris, Berlin and more. She fully believes that a rising start-up would have very clear and accurate brand positioning and strong product content. Hence, Zamani Collection pioneered new models for retailing antiques and art pieces and redefine the game for luxury home décor. Additionally, as a managing partner at Niwo Life, a Chinese women online media platform, she provides her insights and resources for event planning and business development. Niwo, aiming to inspire women to live as her true self, has now more than 200,000 followers on social and partners across many industries and organizations.

Prior to building her own business, she maneuvered as brand and marketing intelligence from tech tycoons, to fashion start-up, luxury travel, and F&B chains. Before that, she really enjoyed being a broadcaster in the U.S.

Sylvia speaks Mandarin Chinese, English, basic Korean and French. She currently lives and travels between Beijing and Palo Alto, enjoys her leisure time as a fashionista.

Anne-Laure has over 11 years international business experience in China, and has been Marketing and Communications Manager at the EU SME Centre for the last five years.

Prior to joining the Centre, she worked in the sports and entertainment industry for a Chinese company affiliated to the Ministry of Sports and a UK run sports marketing and events company.
She has a MA in Interpreting and Translating from the University of Bath, UK.

As part of the senior management team at the EU SME Centre, Anne-Laure manages marketing, branding and partnerships.

Skills to share: Marketing, event management, cross cultural communication and public/private sector relationships development. I can also share my experience starting out in China and developing a career path here and balancing it with a growing family.

On the 8th of January 2008 I have arrived in Beijing with two suitcases of wine samples and a big excitement to rock China. At this time, I didn’t had much money and I lived in youth hostels. I traveled all around China to research about the wine market and started to sell at start, containers of wines to importers as an agent.
A few months later, when I realized that there is a huge market, I founded a company called MQ Wines (北京马素格葡萄酒商贸有限公司), which is a B2B company and its aim was it to offer good quality, low-price wines to B2B channels in China. We have grown fast.
In November 2010 our entire warehouse burned down and we were out of business for four months. During this time, we developed a new wine retail concept called CHEERS Wines (北京瑞品惠众商贸有限公司).
With CHEERS we created the new wine generation in China and made wine drinking fun & affordable. Already after two years we suddenly got hundreds of copycats all around China. A compliment and a challenge. We have built a strong and trustful brand within the Beijing market during the past years and we are now expanding with a committed franchise concept to other cities all around China. Our aim is to build up 888 stores and constantly stay on top of the market.
Before China, I have lived and traveled in South East Asia, especially India, for almost four years. I founded my own charity organization www.chandra-mia.ch and build up computer schools, in many poor regions.
Before Asia, I was an application engineer at Swiss Re for six years.
I love the extreme and the challenge to go beyond boarders. I strongly believe that everything is possible when we stay persistent and let the heart guide the way!

Sophie Su is the Founder of the App that connect locals and exapts called Pingo Space. Sophie’s work in the creation of the Pingo Space App truly exemplifies who she is as a person. As a Chinese-Australian, she embodies the vision of Pingo Space in promoting deeper cross-cultural connection between the Chinese locals and the expats in China through the facilitation of in-person skillshare that individual expat provides on the App, while expats can monetize their skills and build their personal brand in China.

She grew up in Australia and after graduating from New South Wales, she moved to China to begin her career. There she began her journey in education where she has over a decade of experience in academic management in one of the largest education companies in China as well as a former IELTS examiner for the British Council in Beijing. She was recently nominated as female co-founder of the year by TechNode at the China Bang Awards where Pingo Space won the best “Educational and service Product of the Year” award at Chinabang.