Year 2024: Fast Forward to the Future

Jenny Lee is a Managing Partner at GGV Capital and is best known for investing at the front of innovation, being the first venture capitalist to invest in flying cars.

Similarly, her lifelong passion for gaming led to investments in the metaverse and her desire to help tackle food insecurity around the world has led to many investments in food-tech and sustainability. She is an active investor in a wide range of global innovative private technology start-ups in the EdTech, Fintech, Robotics/AI, EV, and Web3 sectors.

Her portfolio currently includes 17 companies valued at more than $1 billion.
She has had eight IPOs in the last five years, including two in 2021 across the NYSE, Nasdaq, ChiNext, HKSE, and SSE STAR Market exchanges, and numerous portfolio companies exits via M&A.

Jenny launched GGV’s first office in China in 2005 and reopened the firm’s Singapore office in 2019. She also leads the firm’s USD fundraising activities.

She is a highly respected member of the Singapore business community, serving on the boards of Temasek, SATS Ltd and Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC), which is chaired by Singapore’s prime minister.

Jenny’s recognitions include being named on the Forbes Midas list of the top 100 global VCs for 12 consecutive years, and she is the first woman to break the top 10 ranking. She was voted World’s Top 5 Female Venture Capitalists by Forbes Global (2021), Forbes Asia Power Businesswomen 25 List (2019), Business Times’s Outstanding Overseas Executive Award (2019) and Singapore’s Business China’s Young Achiever Award (2016)

The Founder and CEO of APAC Advisors, Steven Okun is widely considered to be a leader on corporate public affairs, sustainability, and stakeholder engagement in the Asia Pacific region. He is also the ASEAN representative for the Emerging Market Private Equity Association (EMPEA).

Living and working in Singapore since 2003, Steven created and led Asia Pacific public affairs for both global investment firm KKR and global logistics firm UPS, as well as being a leader of multiple business chambers and industry associations, including having been elected three times each as Chairman of both the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore and the Asia Pacific Council of American Chambers of Commerce (APCAC). He remains on the boards of both.

As KKR’s first Director of Asia Pacific Public Affairs, Steven’s responsibilities encompassed government affairs, communications, stakeholder engagement and environmental and social responsibility issues for KKR, as well as in supporting those efforts for its portfolio companies across the region.

Steven led UPS Asia’s public affairs matters on aviation, competition, and trade from 2003 until 2010, and before that worked in UPS’ Washington, DC office. He was instrumental in UPS Airlines obtaining it first-ever authority to operate in China in 2001.

Steven served in the Administration of President Bill Clinton as Deputy General Counsel at the US Department of Transportation, being at the Department from 1994 to 1999. For his public service, he was awarded the Secretary’s Award for Special Service Commendation.

He represents and advocates the views of the US business community in Asia, including as a periodic guest host on CNBC. A sought-after expert on public affairs, he speaks frequently in the media, at universities, businesses, and conferences across the region, as well as is the author of numerous articles.

Steven received his BA from the University of Virginia and his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Dr. Michio Kaku is one of the most widely recognised figures in science in the world today. He is a world-renowned theoretical physicist and futurist. He is also a bestselling author, acclaimed public speaker, and popularizer of science.

He holds the Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics at the City Univ. of New York. He graduated from Harvard University in 1968 (summa cum laude and 1st in his physics class). He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1972 and has been a professor at CUNY for almost 30 years. He has taught at Harvard and Princeton as well.

His goal is the complete Einstein’s dream of a “theory of everything,” to derive an equation, perhaps no more than one inch long, which will summarise all the physical laws of the universe. He is the co-founder of string theory, a major branch of string theory, which is the leading candidate today for the theory of everything. His Ph.D. level textbooks are required reading at many of the world’s leading physics laboratories.

Kaku is the author of numerous international best-sellers, including “Quantum Supremacy: How The Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything”, The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth” and frequently contributes articles for major publications including Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Discover Magazine, Wired Magazine, N.Y. Times, Washington Post, London Daily Telegraph, London Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Fast Magazine, among many others.

He is regularly called upon to make appearances on international radio and TV, including the Larry King Show, Nightline, 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, CNN, CNN-Financial, ABC TV News, Fox News, BBC-TV, BBC-Radio, PBS’s Nova and Innovation, Tech-TV. He has also appeared on the David Letterman Show, the Colbert Report, the Conan O’Brian show, HBO’s Bill Maher Show, and has appeared on numerous science specials, including PBS’s Steven Hawking’s Universe, Science Odyssey, and Einstein Revealed, the BBC’s Future Fantastic, Parallel Universes, Copenhagen, Channel 4’s The Big G: the story of gravity, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel’s Exodus Earth, A and E, the History Channel’s Universe series
and biography of Einstein, and many science documentaries.

He was profiled in Tech-TV’s Big Thinkers series and is a regular commentator on that cable network. Kaku was also featured in the full-length, 90-minute feature film, Me and Isaac Newton, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2001.

Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, and how emerging technologies will change our daily lives, and how future trends will bring new avenues to business and society.

Sharanjit has brought you the news from Asia on BBC World News, Bloomberg Television and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for a quarter of a century.

She spent eighteen years with BBC World News, covering business and politics, anchoring from its Asia bureau and from London's Broadcasting House. She regularly anchored live on location on breaking stories from the Asia Pacific region, while contributing to BBC World Service radio and the BBC news website.

A Singaporean native, she's produced and presented documentaries on TV and radio about her city on the BBC.

Educated in North America with undergraduate degrees in Journalism and a Masters in English, Sharanjit has lived and worked in Washington DC, London, Tokyo, Vancouver and Singapore, bringing a truly global perspective to her work.

She now regularly moderates high-level debates for the United Nations, the ADB and other multilateral and financial institutions while balancing a board career and advising companies and educational institutions on diversity, inclusion, and media strategy. She divides her timebetween Singapore and Bath, UK.

Jason Moo was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Singapore in March 2023. He joined Bank of Singapore from Julius Baer, where he was Head Private Banking Southeast Asia and Branch Manager Singapore.

Prior to joining Julius Baer in 2020, Jason worked at Goldman Sachs for more than two decades and has held several senior roles, including CEO of Goldman Sachs Singapore and Head of Southeast Asia and Australia for Private Wealth Management (PWM).

Before relocating back to Singapore, he was based in Hong Kong as Head of Market Solutions Group and Head of Alternative Capital Markets Asia Pacific. Prior to that, he worked in the Equities Merchandising Group in New York. He joined Goldman Sachs as a financial analyst in PWM in Singapore upon graduation.

Jason earned a BA in Economics and East Asia Studies, with a focus on Japan, from Brown University, USA. He serves on the Board of Governors of Raffles Institution

Jean Chia is Bank of Singapore’s Global CIO, responsible for the house view across Macroeconomics, Investment Strategy, FX, Equity & Fixed Income Research, as well as Discretionary Portfolio Management (DPM), Advisory Portfolio Management (APM) and Funds Selection teams at Bank of Singapore. She is a member of the board of directors for BOS International Funds, Luxembourg and a member of the OCBC Wealth Panel.

Jean has over 20 years of experience in Private Banking and Asset Management. Prior to her current role, she was previously Head, Equities Advisory & Sales, responsible for the equities and derivatives business at Bank of Singapore, and Head of Client Advisory Services for Equities, Investment Products & Services at UBS Wealth Management, Singapore.

Prior to UBS, she was Vice President, Head of Grassroots Research at Allianz Dresdner Asset Management (now known as Allianz Global Investors).

Jean graduated with an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from University of Oxford, UK. She holds a Sustainable Finance certification from Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership (CISL).

Jean is currently a Financial Women’s Association of Singapore (FWA) Female Champion and an Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF) Fellow for Private Banking and Wealth Management.

Eli Lee is the Chief Investment Strategist at Bank of Singapore and he plays a central role in developing asset allocation and thematic strategies across global asset classes for the Bank.

He is a key member of Bank of Singapore’s investment committee, which determines the Group’s overall investment strategy and direction, and serves as a member of the OCBC Group Wealth Panel.

He also previously led the Special Situations Research team at OCBC Investment Research. As an investment thought leader, Eli’s independent perspectives are often sought after by international media, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and CNBC.

With close to two decades of industry experience, Eli began his investment career at the Wellington Management Company in Boston.

He graduated from Harvard University with an MA in statistics.

Mansoor is a macroeconomist and financial market strategist with two decades experience covering institutional investors around the world. Mansoor speaks to policymakers and central bankers and maintains links with think-tanks in Washington and Beijing. He appears on CNBC and Bloomberg Television, his work features in The Economist and he has written for the Financial Times.

Mansoor was most recently at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s investment arm, NatWest Markets, where he was the Asia region's Macro Strategist and previously the bank’s Global Head of FX Strategy. Prior to joining RBS, Mansoor spent 17 years at UBS in London, Zurich and Singapore where he was also Global Head of FX Strategy from 2002 to 2014.

Mansoor holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Economics from the London School of Economics.

He was tutored by Professor Charles Goodhart, a former Chief Adviser at the Bank of England.