Carrie Liauw is the Founder and Director of Tabula Rasa, an event curation agency built on creating meaningful shared experiences. She believes that events are a platform for driving knowledge and awareness, while bringing communities together. Tabula Rasa's signature event, Empiricon, is one such platform, where impactful and knowledge-driven conversations call for urgent change and action.
Renee Pan spent her first half of career working with big brands and corporates including Vodafone, P&G, Starbucks, Ford, Wrigley’s, Qoros, Saatchi & Saatchi’s, WPP, Publics Group, etc. She has also tried out a couple of startup ideas after graduation. Later on, she headed up a Sales & Marketing team of 35 people in a Vodafone contracted marketing agency, and stepped into the technology world by joining an award winning mobile agency in China – FabriQate and became the Operations Director there for 3 years.
She joined Brinc in 2015. Brinc is a Global Venture Accelerator that empowers startups in every stage throughout the whole life cycle to help them launch successful businesses. Brinc is based in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Bahrain, Poland, Barcelona, Tel Aviv and Inida. It has 81 investments across 26 countries by far. She joined Brinc 4 years ago to work with startups and founders, to make their concepts become ready-to-be shelf products, and to help them to enter new markets. Now she is working with local and international governments and resources closely to forest the local ecosystem for startups and technology innovation and transformation. She and her teams has accelerated 50+ startups and helped 12 companies enter to the China market.
Josie Stoker, ‘eco-preneur’, is CoFounder of CAPTURE, a first-of-it’s-kind mobile app empowering users to reduce and offset their carbon footprints. Josie believes in the power of individual action to address the climate crisis in parallel with business & government, and is motivated to empower people understand and de-code the impact of their actions on the planet. Josie has lived in Asia for 6 years, and has gathered diverse perspectives on life along the way from work with Indigenous groups in Mongolia, Kenya & Indonesia.
Dr Reid Lim is a backpacker, medical doctor and the founder of MEDGIC - an artisanal Medical Artificial Intelligence company. He started life as a physician but soon realised his passion was in AI. So why not combine both? Reid had no idea that years later his research would come to fruition and now he is a man on a mission to democratize healthcare - a gift from machines, to all men on Earth.
Darren Toh is a Co-founder and Head of Communications & Compliance for both Perlin and the Centre of Future Trade based in Singapore. He was previous Head of Communications & Compliance for Republic Protocol (now REN). He was also an advisor to a number of other blockchain projects and co-founded BlockPR, a technology and blockchain-based PR firm. Darren has also devoted much of his time working with environmental and education-based projects in Australia and Indonesia. He has over a decade of experience as a legal advisor, corporate regulator, senior federal government investigator, and committed conservationist.
Dustin is a believer that everyone needs to have technology that empowers people to create healthier living and working environments. He founded uHoo on this belief to help people understand the air they breathe and take action. Today, uHoo is part of KPMG's real estate innovations for 2019, with clients across Asia and Europe and has been featured in Forbes, Information Week, Entrepreneur and CNN, among others.
Stephanie Dickson is a leading voice in sustainability across Asia, and the founder of Green Is The New Black, Asia’s first Conscious Festival and media platform. Her mission is to make sustainability mainstream, accessible and sexy. As a changemaker in the green space, Stephanie has been described as a "sustainability entrepreneur helping Asia businesses combat climate change" (CNBC) and a "force of nature" (Honeycombers). She is also a two-time TEDx speaker (P&G), and one of Prestige 40 Under 40 (2018).
Jonathan is the Chief Development for revolv, a start-up that uses RFID technology to create a system for the rental and return of takeaway food and drink containers across cities, in order to reduce single-use waste. He is also the Founder of The Final Straw, a Singaporean environmental business working directly with cafes and bars to reduce plastic waste. He is a pragmatic idealist, keen to translate sustainable ideas and ambitions into reality.
Matthias Gelber was voted the ‘Greenest Person on the Planet’ in 2008 and received the Green Icon of the year award in Malaysia in 2016. In 2017, Matthias built South East Asia’s first off-grid tiny eco home in Malaysia and published a book on recycled paper only, printed with ink made from mushrooms. Matthias has recently delivered his 5th TEDx talk at University Technology Malaysia on the subject of how to achieve zero waste as a hotel guest and he has recently been appointed as Director for Sustainability at GSX Exchange
Lekha is the founder of Nexergy, a tech start-up that offers award-winning and globally deployed Energy Efficiency technologies to the Singapore market. She is passionate about solving the cooling crisis and addresses the most prevalent and energy intensive equipment on the equatorial belt – chillers, refrigeration and air-conditioning systems. She is a strong advocate for climate change awareness, collective action, and conscious and sustainable lifestyles.
Susanna Hasenoehrl is Director Asia, Growth & Commercialisation, at Yara International. Through Yara’s digital farming solutions, she and her team enable smallholder farmers to thrive, feeding the world and protecting the planet.
Susanna combines global startup and corporate experience in tech, innovation and digital transformation. Previously, she worked at the world’s first free mobile operator Blyk, the largest migraine patient platform Healint, as well as at Nokia and Siemens in global sales and business development roles. As an entrepreneur, Susanna developed and launched Joice Nutrition providing evidence-based nutrition ratings at scale from the cloud.
Driven to halt climate change and childhood obesity, Susanna also runs Gravista Leaders - the international female leaders group in Singapore.
Susannah Jaffer is passionate about empowering individuals and companies paving the way toward a more responsible retail industry. She is the founder of ZERRIN, a hybrid retail and media platform which raises awareness of niche and notable brands, innovations and ideas driving sustainable style, beauty and culture forward. ZERRIN's goals are to support emerging ethical labels and entrepreneurs, to inspire and enable citizens to practice mindful consumerism and to spark meaningful, progressive conversations around sustainability and business. Susannah used to work within Singapore's media landscape as a magazine editor and creative director when, through various personal and professional experiences, she woke up to the social and environmental impact of the retail industry and wanted to be a positive force for change.
Joyce is the co-founder of StartupX and leads programmes and partnerships. She also runs one of the largest Startup Weekends around the world in Singapore and has facilitated a Global Startup Weekend in Beijing. Her exposure across the APAC startup ecosystem leads her to actively support initiatives that help provide growth and opportunities to early-stage founders.
Professor Jeff Obbard holds a PhD in Environmental Science and has spent 17 years at the Faculty of Engineering at National University of Singapore, where he also served as the team lead of the United Nations Mondialogo Engineering Award in support of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Jeff is currently a Visiting Professor to the School of Water, Energy & Environment at Cranfield University in the UK, and has recently founded the environmental consultancy company ‘Living Planet’ in Singapore.
Hareld van den Brink directs Metabolic's work in Asia. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Hareld has a master’s degree in Production Engineering and Logistics, specializing in Systems Thinking and Design. He has extensive experience worldwide with innovative start-ups and major multinational management and engineering consultancy firms, and has a passion for innovation, sustainability and entrepreneurship. He has lived in Germany, Japan, and India, and is now based in Singapore.
Vinise strongly believes that the power of awareness and our voice can be instrumental in behavioural change and that People-first Public-Private-Partnerships (PfPPPs) as a means for ensuring sustainable, ethical and community-building economic development, can change the world. Previously with the Singapore Mental Health Film Festival and now SecondMuse, she helps form communities and partnerships between the public, governmental and private sectors to propel conversations and drive systemic change in SEA. A generalist, Vinise has previous experience in a globally-renowned advertising agency, public relations, festival management and greenhouse gas reporting.
Elias is the current Vice President of Innovate360, Southeast Asia and Singapore’s first 90000.s.q.f Food-Tech Incubator, Investor & Accelerator with Facilities Recognized by the Singapore government. Besides food-tech, Elias is a widely known thought-leader & conference speaker in the Fintech/Blockchain Space as an early investor and Singapore Leader for NEO, China’s Biggest Blockchain Company & Protocol.
Ifeoma Ubby is the founder and designer of OliveAnkara, the meeting point of African fabrics and modern fashion designs with an Italian taste. The first OliveAnkara collection was launched in June 2017.
The concept at the base of OliveAnkara is very simple and yet quite disruptive: make African inspired clothes that can be worn by women of all races. At OliveAnkara, they blend African fabrics and Italian fashion design to make clothes for women of all colours. OliveAnkara's production approach is oriented towards two main concepts: to be a so called slow fashion brand, where quality and uniqueness are above quantity and mass production, and to always try their best to be as close as possible to the concept of zero waste.
Marc is a chemical engineer with over 20 years’ experience and 11 years specialised in energy and climate change. Raised in Australia, he has been in Singapore for the last two years. His company, engeco, helps businesses understand their exposure to climate change risk and helps them develop and implement climate change strategy. He is also working to develop global standards in the area of circular economy as part of the ISO Technical Committee for Circular Economy.
Russ Neu is a Venture Partner, Impact, at Quest Ventures, a leading venture fund for technology companies that have scalability and replicability in large internet communities. The impact fund, the first in Asia from a venture capital fund, focuses on base of pyramid issues in Southeast Asia. Russ is also the Founder and CEO of Social Collider, a joint project with JTC and Quest Ventures, that is building a collaborative, co-working, and co-innovation community for impact organisations in Singapore. In 2018, Russ published 'It Made A Difference To This One', a book about an NGO that has helped more than 20,000 children impacted by AIDS in China.
Quentin Vaquette is Co-Founder and Managing Director at ENGIE Factory Asia-Pacific, where he oversees ENGIE’s venture activities across the region. Prior to holding this position, Quentin initiated and led the development of renewable hydrogen energy projects across Asia-Pacific with a primary focus on energy import and export. He also led several M&A and project finance deals in energy infrastructure across Asia. As an innovator with extensive experience in energy tech business development and finance, Quentin is highly passionate about sustainable energy innovation and the exponential impact that startups and great founders can bring to this space.
Christopher is the Managing Partner of TRIVE, a venture capitalist that invests in early-stage deep technology startups. As a 4th generation serial entrepreneur-turned-VC, he has more than 20 years of experience in growing businesses across Southeast Asia in various industries of deep technologies and e-commerce. As a mentor, he has provided more than 1000 1-to-1 advisory sessions with Singapore-based startups on fundraising and expansion plans, and supported over 38 Singapore startups to obtain over US$25m in startup funding.
Jon graduated from Parsons The New School for Design, New York, as Menswear Designer of the Year (2015), where he earned his B.F.A. in Fashion Design.
He was a recipient of the CFDA Scholarship Award (2014), Hugo Boss Award (2015), and was one of i-D Magazine’s Top 10 Undergraduate Designers to watch. He has since been featured in STYLE.com (now VOGUE.com), Vogue Italia, Interview Mag, Buro 24/7 Singapore, Esquire Singapore and Harper’s Bazaar Singapore. A DesignSingapore Scholar (2011) Associate and CFDA+ Member (NY), Jon is currently based in Singapore contributing to the creation of The Bridge Fashion Incubator (TBFI), an initiative by Textile and Fashion Federation (Singapore) (TaFF).
Fionn Ferreira, 18 years old is a teenager who is enthusiastic about science, innovation and technology. From West Cork, Ireland, he has been interested in nature from a young age and has developed a new method to remove microplastics from water.
Gautam Prabhu is passionate about helping event organizers go green, go paperless and increase attendee engagement at their events.
Gautam is the founder of Actigage, a SaaS-based Event app platform that makes it very easy for event organizers to build intuitive mobile apps for their events. Gautam has vast experience in Product Management and Operations.
Jovan has vast experiences in launching & consulting for both for-profit and non-profit enterprises. He is the co-creator of Restorative Innovation and the founder of RIGHT Foundation, a non-profit think tank dedicated to advance and proliferate the body of knowledge of Restorative Innovation. In addition, he is also the co-founder and CEO of REAL IMPACT – an impact-driven outcome-based certification body. In his previous roles, he has led special projects and built business units from scratch. More recently, he was also involved in venture capital, teaching, and research. Jovan is also an Adjunct Lecturer with Platform E by SIM and is represented in the Singapore Standards Council. He holds a Master of Science in Management from the National University of Singapore.
Verleen Goh is the co-founder and Chief Food Fighter of Alchemy Foodtech. With the belief that food is the new medicine, she is on a quest to use food science and technology to create new functional foods and ingredients to combat chronic diseases. Currently, she is set on solving the diabetes problem in Asia, starting with our love for rice. Alchemy Foodtech has a proprietary patent-pending food technology that lowers the GI (glycemic index) of traditional high GI carbohydrate staples such as white Jasmine/Japanese rice, white breads and noodles. Verleen graduated with an honours degree in Food Science and Technology from National University of Singapore.
Christian Cadeo is currently the Managing Partner, Asia for Big Idea Ventures. Big Idea Ventures is a new alternative protein venture capital fund/accelerator based in New York and Singapore. It is anchored by investments from Temasek Holdings and Tyson Food (NYSE: TSN/Fortune 100 company).
Christian's first startup was at AdMob which was eventually acquired by Google for US$750MM. The second startup, JUST, raised US$372MM from Founders Fund, Horizon Ventures and Eduardo Saverin. Recently he was at Domo where he joined pre-IPO as the 1st employee in Southeast Asia. Domo had raised close to US$700MM from investors such as Benchmark, Jeff Bezo and TPG. The company IPO on NASDAQ in 2018.
Christian also spent four years at Google managing the mobile and enterprise division in Southeast Asia. Earlier in his career he worked at Microsoft managing commercial development within the online division.
Ken is the Global Head of Sustainability for CHARLES & KEITH Group where he oversees the full spectrum of social, environmental, and raw materials-related impact programmes, including the development and execution of the company’s overall sustainability strategy. Prior to CHARLES & KEITH Group, Ken held key positions with UNIQLO and H&M, where he implemented large-scale sustainability programmes through strategic engagement with notable organisations such as The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), The Textile Exchange, Canopy, The Better Cotton Initiative, and The Accord for Bangladesh on Fire and Building Safety.
Empiricon is Asia’s premier conference advocating knowledge-driven conversations through sensory experiences.
In 2018, Empiricon launched at the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology with a focus on deep-tech solutions for sustainability. We brought together the best minds in sustainability, deep-tech and innovation, and explored how experiencing the challenges together, starting conversations, and building a strong and vested community can drive change for a better future.
In 2019, we continue to push for impact-driven conversations around the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals - how can technology and innovation spur this movement further and faster?
Join us to do your part in saving the world we live in.
9:00 - 9:45
10:00 - 10:05
10:05 - 10:15
10:15 - 11:00
11:00 - 11:30
11:30 - 11:50
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12:30 - 13:30
13:30 - 14:00
14:00 - 14:45
14:45 - 15:15
15:15 - 1530
15:30 - 16:00
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16:15 - 17:00
17:00 - 17:45
17:45 - 18:00
18:00 onwards
China is the world’s largest market and manufacturing hub and you need to start thinking about it now! THero and Brinc are bringing the ‘Make It In China’ Startup Contest to 9 cities across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific regions to see if you have what it takes to ‘Make It In China’! The contest hopes to introduce international hardware startups to China’s manufacturing ecosystem to establish strong supply chains with local partners so they can scale their product manufacturing successfully.
The Singapore semi-finals will be held during Empiricon, Asia's premier conference advocating knowledge-driven conversations through sensory experiences, held for the 2nd time, with a thematic focus on Tech x Sustainability: Your Future, Your Decisions on 30 Sep at Esplanade Annexe Studio.
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Tabula Rasa is a Singapore based events curation company founded on the spirit of generating experiences.
Latin for blank slate, Tabula Rasa is a philosophical theory stating that all humans are born without perceptions and expectations. Throughout life, we find meaning by experiencing and learning. Through curating knowledge-based and industry driven conferences, and designing campaigns and festivals with a good cause, Tabula Rasa shares experiences and builds communities.
Empiricon is a step further in this pursuit of knowledge and meaningful experiences.
Talk to us at empiricon@tabularasa.com.sg
