Professor Wong Poh Kam obtained two BSc.’s., an MSc. and a Ph.D. from MIT. He is Professor at the NUS School of Business and concurrently the Senior Director for NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, which promotes entrepreneurship education and outreach activities and runs a wide range of university technology spin-off support programs including the NUS Enterprise Incubator (NEI), various seed funding schemes and mentoring services.

Programmes that he has initiated include Start-Up@Singapore, the largest annual business plan competition in Singapore, the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Singapore, the NUS Social Venture Lab, the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge Asia, as well as Lean LaunchPad Singapore. He also directs the centre’s research program on technology entrepreneurship and innovation strategy, and has published extensively in numerous international refereed journals as well as consulted widely for international agencies such as the World Bank and OECD, various government agencies in Singapore such as A*STAR, EDB, IDA and NRF, and many high tech firms in Asia.

An entrepreneur who co-founded three companies prior to joining academia, he has been an active angel investor with investment in over a dozen high tech start-ups in Singapore, Silicon Valley, China and India. He is the founding chairman of Business Angel Network (Southeast Asia) and BAF Spectrum Pte Ltd, an angel investment fund co-invested in by SPRING SEEDS Capital. He was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Silver) by the Singapore Government in 2013.

Karen Ngui joined DBS in June 2005 and is Managing Director and Head of Group Strategic Marketing and Communications.

She is responsible for corporate communications, brand management, corporate advertising, strategic marketing, internal communications, sponsorships and corporate social responsibility. She leads media and issues management efforts across the DBS Group and is responsible for managing and enhancing the bank’s brand positioning and establishing a consistent brand identity across all businesses and markets, including Singapore, Greater China, South and Southeast Asia. She is also a board member of the DBS Foundation and a governor of the Singapore International Foundation.

Karen has over 25 years experience in corporate branding, marketing and communications for financial institutions. Prior to joining DBS, she was the Global Head, Brand Management and Strategic Marketing for Standard Chartered Bank.

Karen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Engineering from University of Southern Illinois and a Masters of Business Administration from University of Iowa. She is a Malaysian citizen and a Singapore Permanent Resident and is married with three children.

Ignatius Low spent 17 years of his career as a journalist and editor with The Straits Times, before he was appointed head of Media Solutions, Integrated Marketing Division, at Singapore Press Holdings. He joined the paper in 1999 as a banking and telecoms reporter and subsequently became Business Editor, Sunday Times Editor, News Editor and finally, Deputy Editor. As a columnist, he has taken on a wide range of topics and is equally comfortable doing the occasional business or public policy commentary as he is with the more personal lifestyle column he writes regularly for The Sunday Times.

Neil D’Souza is the founder of Zaya Learning Labs, a disruptive educational startup that is bringing the online education revolution to low-income schools throughout the globe. As a social entrepreneur, Neil was recognized by Echoing Green in 2013 for his work empowering women to become para-teachers and run micro-schools in India. He was the first winner of the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge Asia in 2014 and also won the NASSCOM Social Innovation Award in India. Neil has an engineering background and worked in the computer networking industry for over four years at Cisco Systems where he focused on Mobile Internet and Video Technologies. He was also part of a team that spearheaded the 4G/LTE protocol that forms the core for most mobile networks in the US. During his time at Cisco, Neil developed a strong passion for helping underprivileged communities and he set his sights on how to bridge the education gap for children in remote regions of the world. His product ClassCloud, provides access to education content and personalized learning to schools with limited access to Internet connectivity.

Rebekah Lin is the Co-Founder of The Social Co., a youth-led organization that aims to activate youths and businesses to leverage on their skills to give back to lesser-known charities in Singapore. Their first movement, 50 For 50, raised $4.5 million and heaps of awareness for more than 50 charities. She has been on the committee of the Yellow Ribbon Fund since 2011 and recently joined the Community Chest of Singapore as a main committee member.

Her corporate experiences include stints with Ogilvy & Mather, Singapore Press Holdings, Tung Lok Group, Be An Idea and Tembusu Partners. In her day job, Rebekah works at fintech startup, FundedHere, an equity crowdfunding platform. Rebekah graduated from Nanyang Technological University with an honours degree in Business Administration and has completed an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Jayesh Parekh is a Managing Partner at Jungle Ventures, a Pan-Asian Venture Capital fund based in Singapore.

He is a Co-Founder of Sony Entertainment Television, a major television network of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is subsidiary of Sony Japan.

He spent over 12 years at IBM in Houston and Singapore, and part of the team that brought IBM back to India.

He is on the Board and the Investment Committee of Aavishkaar India II Fund and Aavishkaar Frontier Fund, which are social impact funds. He is also on the board of Sanctum Wealth Management, One Animation, Milaap and Picdot (Flickbay).

He holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

He is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD.

He is a Charter Member of TiE and Indian Angel Network.

Zhifeng is Accenture’s Open Innovation Lead for Singapore. Open Innovation is a global network that helps promising startups work with Accenture’s clients around the world.

He works closely with Accenture teams to create their clients’ innovation agendas and strategies, and to develop client capabilities that leverage the startup ecosystem, such as corporate venture capital and innovation processes. He also leads a number of internal research projects design to formulate Accenture’s perspective on various segments of the innovation ecosystem in South East Asia.

Zhifeng spent most of his career working for startups in both San Francisco and Singapore, and has experience in software engineering, sales, and product management. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Classical Studies from Stanford University.