Contributors

Abhilash Purushothaman

With over 20 years of experience in software sales, pre-sales, and marketing, I am a seasoned leader and a passionate advocate of digital transformation. I have a proven track record of building and growing profitable, predictable, and sustainable SaaS-led businesses across Asia Pacific and Japan, working with global conglomerates, financial institutions, fintechs, digital natives, and service providers.

As the Vice President & General Manager for Asia at Rubrik, I am responsible for all go-to-market functions in the region, where we are on a hyper-growth journey with a mission to secure and protect the world's data, wherever it lives. I lead a diverse and cross-cultural team of sales, pre-sales, marketing, and channel professionals who are customer-obsessed and committed to delivering value and outcomes for our clients. I leverage my expertise in cloud data management, data monetisation, and DevOps to help customers solve their most critical challenges in securing their mission critical data and thereby accelerate their digital transformation journey.

Andy Ng - Veritas Technologies

Andy Ng is the Vice-President and Managing Director for Asia South and Pacific region at Veritas Technologies. In this role, he is responsible for leading Veritas' overall business strategy, sales operations and continuous growth across ASEAN and Pacific region.

An industry veteran with over 25 years of experience, Andy has held senior leadership roles across different domains in the technology space, including client management, business and practice development and project management. Before his present role, Andy was leading the Technical Sales and Services across the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region for Veritas, where he was responsible for charting the overall strategy and partnership between the technical and sales teams, delivering outstanding sales and market share growth, and ensuring technical excellence within the organisation.

Prior to Veritas, Andy was with Symantec Corporation. He was instrumental in championing the transformation of the consulting business, building high-performing APJ Architect and Advisory teams, and growing new routes to market for sales to drive opportunities through consultative selling.

Andy holds a Master of Engineering in Engineering and Management from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Boston University. Andy is fluent not only in English and Mandarin, but numerous Chinese dialects and conversational Japanese as well.

Brian Thung

Brian is the EY ASEAN Financial Services Leader and is responsible for leading the EY financial services organization (FSO) across Southeast Asia. 

He is also a member of the EY Asia-Pacific regional leadership team where he focuses on providing strategic counsel across the key ASEAN markets, managing people and talent development, as well as ensuring alignment across the global and regional organizational strategies and business outcomes.

Brih Aguilar

Dr. Sabine Schaffer

Dr. Sabine Schaffer is Co-Founder of Pro-invest Group, a leading integrated real estate platform within Australasia covering all aspects of development, asset management as well as day-to-day operations. The Group has in excess of $3 billion AUD across hospitality and commercial assets and is setting new benchmarks in ESG, with all assets within the Pro-invest network have some of the highest environment ratings ( including the very first-carbon neutral hotel according to NABERS ratings). Sabine’s career spans from looking after Private Equity investments at 3i into retail schemes, working on high profile projects with McKinsey & Company focusing on Finance and Public Affairs, to being Director of Investments at a GCC based Private Equity firm. Sabine holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University as well as PhD in Economics from Leopold Franzens University, Innsbruck, Austria.

Kim Ang

Neeraj Kaushik

Neeraj Kaushik, Principal Consultant, is a Product Manager for the Infosys® McCamish NGIN platform initiative at Infosys McCamish Systems, US. He is a published author and Top Voice on LinkedIn in 5 areas-Insurtech, Business Analysis, Product Management, Artificial Intelligence and Data Architecture.

Neeraj is an innovative and effective thought leader recognized for achieving exceptional results in highly competitive environments requiring continuous improvement and has driven the business of large-scale technology projects based out of the US, UK, India, and China Geography for the last 18+ years. He has an excellent insurance business domain, architecture, design, and implementation skills in various life insurance administration as well as producer management & compensation systems.

Prior to this, Neeraj was part of Big 4 Consulting firms like PwC & Deloitte where he led digital transformation programs and strategic consulting initiatives across the Life, Annuities, and Property & Casualty Insurance space.

He holds a master’s degree in insurance & risk management from Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) and the designations of ALMI (LOMA), Fellow of Risk Management Association of India (RMAI) and President Select Member (Leadership Excellence at Harvard Square).

Stuart Rogers & Daphne Lee

Stuart Rogers is the Regional Head of Commercial Banking, International Markets, Asia Pacific for HSBC, looking after the commercial/wholesale banking businesses in Bangladesh, Mauritius, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam. Stuart has held this position since May 2022.

Stuart joined HSBC Group in 1999 and has held a number of senior positions in Commercial Banking, Strategy and Risk Management across Sri Lanka and Maldives, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Australia. He was most recently Head of Wholesale Banking for HSBC in Sri Lanka and Maldives.

Daphne Lee was appointed as the Head of Commercial Banking at HSBC Taiwan since January 2023, leading her team to achieve record-high financial performance in the past 18 months. Before her current role, she served as the Head of Global Trade Solution Team (GTS) in Taiwan strengthening HSBC’s leadership in structure trade finance and sustainability area.
 
With over 25 years of experience in the banking industry, Mrs. Lee joined HSBC since January 2008, and held a variety of managerial positions in different areas of the Bank, including risk management, commercial banking, corporate finance structuring, international trade and sustainability. Prior to HSBC, she worked at Cathy United Bank and KPMG.
 
Daphne holds an MBA degree in international business administration from National Taiwan University.

Sunshine Farzan

Sunshine Farzan is a global marketing executive with a passion for helping companies build and scale their business through the integration of digital, marketing, product innovation, demand generation and PR. She has two decades of experience of building brands, enhancing customer experiences, and transforming businesses through digital innovation in Asia Pacific and North America. She currently leads Global Marketing & Communications at Tricor Group, a PE-backed professional services firm. Sunshine is a board director, an active contributor to business publications, and a certified career coach.

Therese Reyes

Therese is Canvas8’s lead editor in the APAC region. She works with experts, journalists, and analysts to understand trends and make sense of them for clients across industries. She was previously editor of VICE Asia, where she led the team in winning a Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for Excellence in Arts & Culture Reporting. As a reporter, she covered current events, K-pop, global pop culture, life, and mental health. She’s spent time in Hong Kong but is now based in the Philippines, splitting her time between busy Manila and the mountain city Baguio.