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Aaron Leung
Public Speaking Trainer, TEDx Coach & Founder of Aaron Public Speaking StudioWORKSHOP MENTOR - How to pitch
Aaron is a Public Speaking Trainer, TEDx Coach & Founder of Aaron Public Speaking Studio. With 13 years in the public speaking sector, he has given over 700 public speaking workshops globally in 15 different countries & in Fortune 500 companies. He is frequently invited as speaking coach & judge for business pitchers, contestants, TEDx speakers & corporate trainers.
Andre Queme
Innovation Manager at Ericsson ONEWORKSHOP MENTOR - Lean Startup Canvas
Andre Queme is Innovation Manager at Ericsson ONE, Ericsson’s internal incubation and acceleration program where he makes sure innovation projects are stimulated and can move forward from idea generation through funding, into a new business within an ecosystem of thousands of patents, projects and talents. He is also proud to be involved with China’s innovation communities such as by Startup Grind, Techstars Startup Digest, and Startup Weekend, for which he helped organizing events in Beijing and Tianjin. He holds a bachelor in industrial design and in film production by the Beijing Film Academy, being versed in project structuralization, idea generation, and business modeling.
Biman Najika Liyanage
Founder | Partner of CirQ TechnologiesMENTOR
Biman Najika Liyanage is a researcher, Inventor and a serial entrepreneur specialized in Affective computing and smart material based advance wearables. Biman was the valedictorian of his graduating classes of 2012 and 2015, where his postgraduate studies in Information and Advanced Signal Processing at BeiHang University focused on Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.Biman has won numerous awards that include TechCrunch’s startup competition, Red Dot design award, FengRu Cup, Global Innovation Challenge and Durex’s Design Challenge organized by a range of world-class institutions and archived More than 20 patents in the area of smart material-based wearable technologies and respiration monitoring as well as AI in the field of affective computing.Biman has worked in areas that range from UAV sensor design to fashion technology, as well as novel technologies in 3D food printing. Biman has collaborated with multiple Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Intel, Tencent, Porsche, Daimler , Volkswagen , CCTV etc. Biman held a TEDxBeijing talk on the topic ‘Innovation is Easy’ in 2015 and was selected as one of the 200 future leaders from St Gallen Symposium in Switzerland 2016. He was also nominated for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia for the Class of 2017 as well as Forbes China Class of 2017 in the field of Healthcare and Sciences. Biman is also a proud Global Shaper in the Beijing Hub and a board member for the NGO ‘Business for Better Society’ and also serves as a Ambassador for She Loves Tech. Accelerator partner at UNHabbitat Nirobi Kenya.
Calvin Chan
Managing Director of P-Sense LimitedMENTOR
Born and raised in an entrepreneurial family, Calvin has co-founded startups across transportation, video game and e-learning industries in Hong Kong and Canada. As a former banking professional with Engineering & Commerce background, he utilizes his cross-industry expertise and experience to serve his current role as the Managing Director of P-Sense, a crowd tracking & analytics solution that supports and realizes the smart city initiative worldwide.
Fei YE
Ecosystem Partnership Manager at Microsoft for StartupsJUDGE
Fei YE is Ecosystem Partnership Manager at Microsoft for Startups (A.K.A Microsoft Accelerator) who is responsible for recruiting startups, connecting VCs, and help startups in Microsoft Ecosystem with instructing BP editing, and other financing/strategy affairs. He co-founded a 600 million USD-RMB parallel venture fund for Shenzhen Capital Group and completed over 15 investments and almost 100 million USD in the first one and half year before working for Microsoft. He was the Managing Director of a 500 million RMB venture fund focusing on AI, IoT and Big Data sectors for Shenzhen Capital Group after leaving parallel fund. Also, he worked as a consultant in Roland Berger in Frankfurt, Germany. He has one master of finance degree from UC Berkeley and one master of management degree Imperial College and one MBA degree from City University of Hong Kong.
Dr. Frances Du
Founding partner at Jiangmen VenturesMENTOR
Dr. Frances Du is the founding partner of Jiangmen Ventures, overseeing investments in technology-driven startups in machine intelligence, IoT, natural human machine interaction and enterprise computing areas. Jiangmen is a venture capital firm not just focusing on tech investment, but also work with many global Fortune 500 companies and China leading companies on their open innovation strategy to incubate and accelerate startups business value creation. Before founding Jiangmen, Dr. Frances Du was the head of Microsoft Ventures in greater China Region. Before Microsoft Ventures, she was a founding partners of GRC Sinogreen Fund, overseeing investments in IT, energy-saving and environment protection, and agriculture in Greater China. Dr. Frances Du is also a veteran entrepreneur. She co-founded the financial data company - JL McGregor & Company in 2005. She also worked at Intel China and ABB China for various investment and corporate finance roles. Dr. Frances Du is the author and translator of couple bestselling business books covers the topic of venture investing and startup management, including “Ways of Venture Financing”, “Think Like an Entrepreneur” and “CEO”. From 2009 to 2010, she also opened a popular “PE Watch” column at cn.wsj.com. Dr. Frances Du received her doctor degree on Economics from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She also hold MBA degree from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. As an expert in venture investment, she currently part time teaching MBA students at Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Hunter Zhang
CEO of INNO-APACJUDGE
Hunter Zhang is founder and CEO of INNO-APAC, experienced with technology consultancy and transformation, venture capital, and the oil industry. His organization provides Government, Industry Parks and Corporate Enterprises with a complete set of technology innovation solutions including innovation & incubation services, international technology transformation, industry investment promotion and innovation center operations.
Ian Flanagan
Founder of TansuoMENTOR
Ian Flanagan has worked at startups and Fortune 500 companies in Beijing for 8 years and is currently building the startup Tansuo, an office space search platform which aims to cover all office spaces in China by 2021.
Kapil Kane
Director of Innovation & co-founder at GrowthX (formerly Ideas2Reality) at Intel CorporationJUDGE
Kapil Kane is the Director of Innovation @ Intel China & co-founder of GrowthX (formerly Ideas2Reality) - an award-winning business accelerator that enables & empowers Intel's employees & biz units to turn their ideas into successful businesses. Over the years they explored 500+ ideas, accelerated 40+ projects, landing 10 of them into the market creating an incremental revenue of $25M with an outlook of $275M of inorganic growth over the next 5 years. Startup helper- advising early stage startups, mentoring at leading startup accelerators, judging global pitching competitions, speaking at startup events, conferences and on podcasts. Previously managed product design at Apple & brought the likes of iPad, iPod, MacBook etc. to life. Co-creator of 1st touch screen at Apple. Masters in Engineering & Design from Stanford University. Been calling Shanghai home for the past 13 years.
Laurence Von Thomas
Serial Entrepreneur at ReflexWORKSHOP MENTOR
Laurence is a serial entrepreneur with a background in film making and photography. In the early naughties, with some college friends, he co-founded a small film production company called Jollywood, it was mainly focussed on short fiction and indie music videos. In 2007 when both YouTube and Vimeo where fresh, he set up the
first ever online music-video platform called Videology, very first platform to register and connect login and community through social media accounts. From that he went on to found If You Leave, an online gallery and photography community that quickly grew to become one of the predominant photography platforms with over 750k active followers across three major platforms on IG, Tumblr and FB. The business model created around this critical success came in form of a publishing house called Arthur-Frank. Four books and two magazines followed, quickly becoming best sellers in the
independent photography section. In 2017 he started designing an analog 35mm SLR camera after it had become clear that none of the traditional camera manufacturers would continue production while a noticeable resurgence in analog photography was happening.This current project is called Reflex.
Lin Ke (Linka)
Youth Economic Empowerment Consultant at UNDP Regional Youth Project on Leadership, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (“Youth Co:Lab”)MENTOR
Linka joined the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub on December 2016. Since then, she has been coordinating national youth entrepreneurship and innovation activities with more than 20 countries under Youth Co:Lab in Asia-Pacific region. Before joining UNDP, she worked as the business development manager for a social enterprise in Hong Kong called Inter Cultural Education for 2 years. She ran programmes such Social Innovation Trip and Asia Pacific Youth Exchange with young people from all over Asia. She has been playing an active role in grass-root led entrepreneur ecosystem in China and Thailand as the facilitator of Startup Weekend and MakeSense. She established a chapter of MODEL APEC in her university to empower youth through leadership and soft skills development. She has a master degree in Interpreting and Translation in Hong Kong Polytechnic University (English and Chinese).
Jonas Wolf
Growth Team Leader at Yodo1 GamesMENTOR
Jonas Wolf is an entrepreneurship enthusiast for 10+ years, started his first business while in university.In China, Jonas evangelized the co-working industry for naked Hub (acquired by WeWork). Since then he developed and led the APAC business for AngelHack to help clients reach their innovation objectives by strategizing and facilitating Hackathons and Intrapreneurship workshops. Currently, Jonas works with the gaming platform startup Yodo1 where is is hiring and developing outstanding talent. He aspires to be a people wizard helping others to shine. Jonas is passionate about the power of community, ideas, and technology to solve problems and improve the lives of billions. Jonas contributes to impact initiatives through Startup Grind Beijing & WEF Global Shapers Beijing Hub II.
Fascinated by the fast pace of technology and resulting changes to the Future of Work, Jonas keeps learning about AI, employee engagement, and corporate culture. Jonas is an avid community builder at heart and believes in giving value first!
Peiqing Xiao
Amazon AWS solution architect at AWSMENTOR
Responsible for the consulting and design of AWS-based cloud computing solution architecture, and is also committed to the application and promotion of AWS cloud services in China. Currently responsible for industry solutions for start-ups, he has worked for IBM, Lenovo, Avnet, and years experience in network architecture, operation and maintenance of large enterprises.
Pietro Mincuzzi
Mentor & Consultant at Trouble MakerMENTOR
Cross-border application technology inventor, automation expert, large enterprise SCADA and MES specialist, PLM (UGS) expert, within 30+ years professional life, he continues inventing new applications for edge technologies with a transversal approach across industries and competences.
During his 20 years of living and working in China, he has lived and worked in many cities and has worked in a variety of industries and applications. He has a wide range of hobbies, such as photographing, cooking, and language learning. In addition to Italian, German, French, and English, he also speaks Chinese and Japanese, and develops strong inter-cultural skills that go well beyond language proficiency.
In March 2019 joins the team of TROUBLEMAKER as resident mentor and consultant offering advise to members and consulting services.
Push Sharma
Managing Director of Mantraa Ventures Pte Ltd SingaporeMENTOR
Push Sharma has over 20 years of APAC and Global experience at some of the worlds leading private equity investment, asset management and real estate consulting firms across India, USA, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. Push is an Architect by education with a Masters Degree with specialisation in Real Estate and finance from Columbia University. Push has always been a leader - across school & college, he was even elected President of his Class at Columbia University. Given his leadership skills, Push decided in 2012 to take the plunge and become a “serial entrepreneur”, He launched his first startup venture in 2012 and is now on to his third, after a successful exit from one. Push also advises various startups on strategy, expansion and fund raising. His area of focus are entertainment, retail, travel, robotics, education and his spare time, he enjoys writing reviews on TripAdvisor as the #1 reviewer in Guangzhou and on Dianping as one of its top 0.1% reviewer in China. He has been Interviewed in various magazines, newspapers, radio and on TV.
Sabrina Benioudren
Chief Operating Officer at Founders LairMENTOR
Sabrina Benioudren has a multicultural background and enjoy using it in order to create stronger communities. She is currently the director of Startup Grind Beijing, the world’s largest community of startups, founders, innovators, and creators present in 600 cities around the world. With our team of 35 people, we were one of the most active chapters globally in 2018 and 2019. In her daily job, she works with Founders Lair, a free peer-to-peer platform that strives to be the ultimate hideout for founders to find all the necessary and valuable resources the ecosystem players have to offer.
Rebecca Xie
Cross Border Manager at Plug and Play ChinaJUDGE
Rebecca is the Cross Border Manager at Plug and Play China who helps startups and entrepreneurs from all over the world expand their business in China. By connecting with local companies, investors, governments etc., over 300 startups have been accelerated via international acceleration programs that Rebecca is running. Before starting the investment and incubation business, Rebecca has worked for Bank of America in New York City and IBM in Beijing, and has rich experience in financial analysis, asset management, investment and sales operation.
Yao Lu
Director of Innovation and Projects at OrangeMENTOR
LU Yao is Director of Innovation and Projects in Orange Sourcing Consulting in Beijing. He focuses his efforts on Asian ICT ecosystem and provides market insight and partnership opportunity to Orange global footprint. He is leading Orange Open Innovation Center China to help Chinese and overseas startups grow potential business together with Orange. Having a research background in artificial intelligence, he is passionate about high-tech innovation and is willing to share his discovery in Greater China.