Mike Lai, Dean of X Academy & Partner at TANG

Mike is responsible for the research, development, and evangelism of TANG’s philosophy and methodology, X Thinking. He has a diverse background with over 10 years consulting experience and 7 years teaching experience in academia; worked in the United States, Hong Kong, and China; and has experience in the areas of branding, interaction design, service design, and experience design. His clients have included Fortune 500 companies, startups, nonprofit organizations from financial, consumer electronics, automotive, and education industries. Mike holds a PhD in Design from Tsinghua University (China), a MDes in Interaction Design from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong), and a BFA in Advertising & Graphic Design from the Columbus College of Art & Design (United States). Mike helps businesses envision, develop, and implement strategies for holistic experiences to create a closer relationship between their brand and customers.

Thibault Genaitay, Head of Le Wagon China

Digital marketing practitioner and self-taught developer for 15 years, Thibault held positions as tech project manager & account director for digital consultancies in both Shanghai & Hong Kong. He worked with luxury brands such as Guerlain, Sephora, Louis Vuitton, Lanvin, Cartier to build high-end online services. In 2016, Thibault brought Le Wagon from Europe to Shanghai aiming to help creative entrepreneurs build amazing products in China. 

Besides teaching front-end development, Thibault leads the operations of Le Wagon in China in order to bring all the tech skills and mindset necessary in our digital economy.

Dinghua Liu, Head of Strategy at Airwallex

Dinghua has over a decade of working experience in banking and financial service industry. She has a bachelor and master degree in Economics from Peking University. She has been working for Roland Berger, Deutsche Bank and more recently Boston Consulting Group as project leader for FIs. By managing and leading key strategic projects for various FIs like commercial banks, financial holding group and asset management companies, Dinghua has gained in-depth understanding in financial service landscape, especially banking industry dynamics and has been well recognized by key clients.

Richard Wu, Chief Commercial Officer, Enterprise SaaS Application, ByteDance

Mr. Richard Wu serves as Chief Commercial Officer for Enterprise SaaS of ByteDance. He is responsible for the global commercialization of ByteDance’s SaaS products, including the planning of overall commercial strategy and marketing development in multiple countries and regions. He is committed to expand the presence of ByteDance’s SaaS products in global market by localizing operation strategies in different countries and regions, enabling every enterprise to collaborate efficiently. Prior to joining ByteDance, Mr. Richard Wu was the Vice President of GE Digital. Before that, Richard was the China Sales Director of WebEx in Cisco China and also General Manager of North China in Infor. He also has sales and channel management role in Oracle and SAP.

Sebastien Gaudin, CEO & Co-founder of The CareVoice

Sebastien’s career has been dedicated to healthcare and new businesses. With an academic background in pharmaceuticals and business, Sebastien Gaudin worked as business development and marketing leader on multiple therapeutic and geographic markets at Sanofi for twelve years, taking a management position within Sanofi China in 2011. Sebastien founded The CareVoice, a Shanghai-based start-up, with the mission of transforming healthcare experience to be more consumer-centric. Thanks to a successful pivot into health insurtech, CareVoice has been working with multiple insurers to unleash their value. After graduating from Ping An first accelerator program and soft-launching the first health benefit and insurance for start-ups in China, Sebastien co-founded StartupCare a new insurtech dedicated to insurance and benefits for start-ups.

Sean Song, COO of Slush China

Sean Song is the COO (chief operating officer) of Slush China, a world leading teach and startup event& platform. Before joining Slush, Sean had been engaged in investment related work. He was investment director of HNA technology group, also director of Summit Capital PE fund. Sean did his master degree of social policy study at university of York, UK. After graduation, his very first job was as the planning and music production of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, and made him the founder of the interactive music project “A million drums “. His was as an investment analyst for Colliers International.

Lei Bao, Airwallex

As a 6-year veteran in the fast-growing cross-border payment industry, Lei has worked across multiple functions from operations, product, to professional services, served a wide range of clients from e-commerce to education, from vacation rental to livestreaming. With rich-gained experience and insights, he joined Airwallex and became a strategic thinker. He and his team are passionate and determined about making cross-border business less hassle and more efficient, aiming to bring cross-border payment service to a new level, by applying the most advanced technology and innovative products. Lei is a NYU alumni, and gained years of working experiences in NGO and Retail business before entering fintech.

Brian Van Damme, Co-Founder & CTO of KAWO

Starting at a young age, Brian has over 15 years of experience in software development, understanding the process from a high level down to critical detail. Having shipped several social media related tools in China over the last decade, he has an intricate understanding of the challenges of the technical landscape and local Social Media platforms.

William Lau, Partner & VP of Brand at USHOPAL

Over 15 years of experience in brand strategy and entrepreneurship, working with fashion, beauty startups and fortune 500 companies. William started his entrepreneurial career early on with his own creative brand agency, supporting clients such as GQ, Lululemon, Pepsi, and DreamWorks. Experienced in brand entry and development, leading new brand positioning and product launch for luxury brands into China. He is currently the Greater China General Manager for the niche luxury fragrance brand, Juliette Has a Gun, and operates as the VP of Branding for global luxury skincare such as Chantecaille and Natura Bissé. He currently also is the China Chapter Leader for FAB, the prestigious, global Fashion and BeautyTech startup community.

Eduardo Alarcón, Founder and CEO of TokyLabs.com

TokyLabs.com is an Edtech company who created Tokymaker: the new standard for tech prototyping for total beginners that it’s changing the way students and organizations approach technological innovation. With his vision, Eduardo specializes in injecting productive creativity into engineering development and operations. During the last years, Eduardo has also devoted greatly to empower XinCheJian (the first Hackerspace in China), specially its community and internal operation. Before moving to Shanghai, Eduardo designed Smart Bank, a fin-tech management platform for banks and financial institutions capable of categorizing and visualizing user transactions as well as making recommendations. He has seven publications in some of the top international scientific magazines to his name on topics ranging from static synchronous compensators to the NASA space elevator. 

范踔群, Boohee 薄荷健康管理BU负责人

范踔群 is a founding member of Boohee. She has been with Boohee for more than 10 years and at the forefront of its development since the beginning. Previously, 范踔群 was in charge of sales of Boohee’s e-commerce and private brand products. She led the team to build more than 100 high-quality health food SKUs which produced ground-breaking sales for Boohee. Currently as Boohee’s health management business leader, 范踔群 conducts long-term observations and research on the diet, health, consumption patterns and characteristics of their young female customers.

宋珊珊, Boohee 薄荷 商务负责人

宋珊珊 has a Masters of Journalism and Communication from Shanghai Jiaotong University and her previous roles include being a Sales Section Chief and Commercial Director of a consulting company. She has utilised her rich experience in cross-border cooperation to lead a number of cross-brand cooperations for Boohee creating 200 million yuan of annual sales. As a current Boohee business leader, 宋珊珊 has strong capabilities in business development ability, market insight, business negotiation, health consumption and brand marketing.

David Chen, Co-founder & CEO of Strikingly

The CEO of SXL, David graduated from the University of Chicago. He founded Strikingly in 2012. In 2013, Strikingly became the first Chinese team graduating from YC. The team received an  investment of $1.5 million from angel round in this year. In 2016, The domestic version of Strikingly “SXL” was officially put into operation. In the same year, David Chen was selected as Forbes Asia Top 30 under 30. In 2017, SXL successfully got a financing of $6 million from A round and announced the “WeChat Miniprogram Solutions”. In 2018, SXL received the A+ round financing of 10 million US dollars and introduced the new product “Super Card”. And David Chen was selected into the entrepreneurial upstar lists under 30 and 2018 Forbes China Top 30 under 30 again.

William Bao Bean, SOSV – General Partner; Chinaccelerator – Managing Director ; MOX – Managing Director

William is a General Partner at SOSV – The Accelerator VC – the #5 most active angel and seed stage investor in the world 2018 with US$500m+ under management.  At SOSV he is the Managing Director of Chinaccelerator the only accelerator in Asia to have a unicorn come through its program – Bitmex the #1 crypto exchange by trading volume in the world.  He is also Managing Director of MOX – the Mobile Only Accelerator – providing mobile startups with free user acquisition. Previously William was a founding Managing Director at SingTel Innov8 Ventures, a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings and spent 11 years in equity research most recently with Deutsche Bank where he was top ranked for Internet in Asia and worked on IPOs for Alibaba, Kingsoft and eLong (Expedia).

Wenny Huang, Community Engagement Manager at Explorium

Wenny Huang is the community engagement manager at Explorium, where she actively engages with various ecosystem partners through conferences, innovation projects, workshops, partnerships, and communities to build compelling ways for businesses to innovate. Before joining Explorium in 2018, Wenny worked for four years in the financial industry, including JPMorgan and China Guangfa Bank. Wenny holds a master’s degree in management studies from Duke University and a bachelor’s degree in marketing from University of Maryland College Park.

Monica Zuriel, Founder & CEO of Zurita Madrid

EMBA by Hult Business School. 10 years in Shanghai as a serial entrepreneur. Fashion designer since 5 years old. She is committed to injecting environmental awareness into the fashion industry and hopes to pass on the concept of sustainable, classic and wearable design.

Alvin Chiang, Founder & CEO of Bowhead Technology

Alvin Chiang is the founder and CEO of Bowhead Technology that creates Gululu interactive bottle to help children to cultivate a healthy habit. Prior to Gululu, Alvin served as an executive in public internet companies such as NetEase, Alibaba and Renren. Alvin was a Cyber Lions jury in 2013 in Cannes Lions Int’l Festival of Creativity and Gululu was featured as one Innovation Lions startup in the 2017 Festival. He was named “Top 100 Influential Marketers” by Marketing China Magazine for 6 years. Alvin is a Fellow of the Aspen China Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Sophie, Director of Content and Production at Himalaya Media

Sophie is the Director of Content and Production at Himalaya Media, a podcast platform, audio content network and original production studio. Previously, Sophie was the host of ShangHai East Radio and Producer of Ximalaya.

Oscar Ramos, Partner at SOSV and Managing Director of Chinaccelerator

Oscar Ramos is a “full stack innovator” with expertise ranging from product development to corporate strategy. He has experience as an entrepreneur, management consultant, and early stage investor. A Telecom MEng and Biomedical PhD dropout, Oscar began his career 14 years ago as an R&D engineer in Ericsson’s Research Center, and then later in a similar post at Telefonica. After discovering the concept of Business Model Innovation he transitioned to the world of medtech startups. This propelled his move to China in early 2008, and he has since then been involved in various dimensions of innovation: product launches, go-to market strategies, venture capital financing, and M&As.

Faith Teo, 8XP Co- Founder & Chief Experience Director 

Faith previously worked in the Alibaba Group in the International UED Department. She lead the LAZADA Seller UX Team and oversaw various platforms, from desktop to mobile. Faith also worked with the business unit and developers to develop data driven solution for the users. In 2018, she co-founded FUSE, a retail airbnb platform that provide brands an alternative solution to launch their product in China market quickly. 

Ping Yu, Director of Education and Training at Shanghai Jingji Enterprise Management Co., Ltd

Ping Yu has been an Internet media practitioner for 8 years; experienced in esports education and management; initiated and led the establishment of Taicang Taidu Vocational Skills Training School; and an expert in developing the esports discipline in higher educational institutions. 

Check out last year’s speaker lineup below: