Board of Directors | Advisory Board | Chapter Chairs

Berlin

Melanie Mohr - Founder & CEO @ YEAY: Melanie is a Berlin-based entrepreneur with 20 years’ experience in Media, Marketing and Mobile Technology. In 2016 she founded YEAY - the leading community for Generation Z to share honest recommendation videos with one another about the lifestyle products they love. In 2018 she became the founder and CEO of the WOM Protocol, the blockchain company helping brands tap into peer-to-peer recommendations and digital publishers monetize their platforms in a user-friendly way through word-of-mouth recommendations. Melanie is a four-time founder and a strong female presence in the tech and blockchain scenes. Melanie is a frequent speaker at tech, blockchain, and marketing conferences including Websummit, Dmexco, Asian Blockchain Summit, Blockshow, Coinagenda, Delta Summit, Mobile World Congress, and DLD.
Rowan Barnett - Head of Google.org EMEA & APAC @ Google: Rowan is responsible for leading Google’s philanthropy in the Europe, Middle East & Africa region. Google.org brings the best of Google to innovative nonprofits that are committed to creating a world that works for everyone. Previously, as Head of Google for Startups, Germany, Rowan was responsible for supporting the startup ecosystem in Germany to work with Google and grow, and helping to enable a new generation of diverse entrepreneurs to succeed. Prior to Google, Rowan spent nearly 5 years at Twitter where he was Senior Director for strategic market development in D/A/CH, Benelux, Russia and Emerging markets. Previously he spent 8 years leading digital and social innovation at the German publisher Axel Springer and news site BILD.de. Rowan has always been passionate about startups and has played an active role in the Berlin ecosystem. Rowan, born and raised in England, studied History at Oriel College, Oxford, before moving to Berlin in 2004.

 


China

Sebastien Gaudin - Co-Founder & CEO @ The CareVoice: 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. Thinking of how insurers had an opportunity to become health partners of their members, he founded and expanded The CareVoice, a Shanghai-based start-up, to make health insurance more human. Thanks to its unique mobile-based SaaS platform, CareVoiceOS, digitizing healthcare and insurance journey, and its innovative portfolio of health insurance affinity products, CareVoice has been working with over 15 insurers and is recognized as a leading Asian health insurtech. After graduating from PingAn first accelerator program and soft-launching the first health benefit and insurance for start-ups in China, Sebastien co-founded StartupCare a related insurtech dedicated to insurance and benefits for start-ups so that entrepreneurs and their teams can devote their energy to successfully grow their businesses.
William Bao Bean - General Partner @ SOSV: SOSV is a US$250m accelerator focused venture capital fund, and the Managing Director of Chinaccelerator, East Asia's first startup accelerator. He joined SOSV from SingTel Innov8 Ventures where he was Managing Director supporting China investments. Previously, William was a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, a venture capital firm backed by Softbank and Cisco. He currently sits on the boards of advisors/directors for a number of companies including GMobi, Massive Impact, ChaseFuture, Neonan, Mingbo, iTalki, and kineticOne as well as organizations including Angelvest (天使谷), the largest and most active angel investing group in Asia, AAMA Shanghai and the Techyizu, Beijing Hive, Digital Matters and AdTech: China events. He holds a BA from Bowdoin College.

 


India

Siddharth Dhamija - CEO @ Zaakpay: Siddharth is currently the CEO of Zaakpay, a payment processing company operating under Mobikwik group. In the past, he has held several leadership positions in companies across India and UAE. His last stint took him to PayPal, where he was a part of the launch team for their business in India. He was also amongst the first employees at Razorpay, leading them as their CGO. Prior to entering payments 6 years ago, he was leading organizations in the telco hardware and software business including India’s poster boy in telecom product space, Subex, back in 2007 up until 2014.
Ashwin Suresh - Founder @ Pocket Aces: Ashwin is the Founder of Pocket Aces, India's largest digital media entertainment company. The Sequoia-backed company operates five socially distributed video content brands as well as a gaming and e-sports app. Before entering the Indian entertainment industry, Ashwin worked at Citigroup and StepStone Global in New York, first in investment banking, and subsequently in private equity. Ashwin was featured on CNBC Young Turks in November 2017, with Pocket Aces being listed as one of the top 10 Indian startups to watch out for in 2018. Ashwin grew up in Dubai and holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as a Diploma in Filmmaking from the New York Film Academy.
Aakrit Vaish - Co-Founder & CEO @ Haptik: Aakrit is the Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik, one of the world's largest conversational AI platforms. Aakrit started the company from his house in 2013 way before AI or chatbots became cool. Today, the company processes more than 10 million bot queries a month and has some of the biggest global brands on its roster. Aakrit has been instrumental in shaping the chatbot industry over the years, which is finally going through its inflection point in 2018. He got his BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign and was part of the Business World 40 Under 40 List of 2017. He started his career at Flurry, which was acquired for $300m in 2014.
Swati Bhargava - Co-Founder @ CashKaro.com: Swati is the Co-Founder of CashKaro.com, India’s largest cashback & coupons site backed by leading investors including Mr. Ratan Tata and Kalaari Capital. With over 1.5 million registered users, CashKaro is a one-stop destination for savings on all online shopping, enabling members to compare prices, earn extra cashback and get free coupons across 1500+ e-commerce sites. Swati is honored to be amongst the top 5 women trailblazers in the Indian e-commerce industry by Economic Times and she was also nominated amongst the Top Young Business Women 2016 by CNBC-TV 18. Swati is a graduate of London School of Economics (LSE) with a BSc in Mathematics and Economics.

 


London

Tom Enraght-Moony - Tom is President International at ecoATM, the pioneer in device reCommerce offering an international network of eco-friendly automated kiosks that provide instant payment and responsible recycling for electronic devices. He is also a Non-Executive Director at Eve Sleep, a London-listed sleep wellness business. He has nearly 20 years of executive experience in leading brand transformation and growth for tech-enabled consumer businesses including Leisure Pass Group, Match.com, E*TRADE, AT&T Wireless, Clearwire, and McArthurGlen. He holds an undergraduate degree from The University of Glasgow and an MBA from INSEAD in France.
Celia Francis - Global Head of Business Development & Sales @ Terraformation: Terraformation is a platform providing tools, training, financing and business support to scale forest restoration projects around the globe. Previously, Celia was CEO of leading services marketplace, Rated People. Ms. Francis was previously Chief Executive Officer of WeeWorld (sold to private equity) and held a variety of marketing and leadership roles within companies in the consumer electronics, internet, media and wireless industries for over fifteen years. She served in the mobile sector for a number of years, as executive vice president of marketing of T-Mobile International. She previously served at IDEO, the world's largest product and services development consulting company. She served as Vice President, Marketing of Xtime (sold to Cox Automotive), Director for Marketing of AltaVista and Director of Compaq's Consumer Internet Division. Ms. Francis holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School Of Management and a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University.

 


New York

Patrick Sullivan - Founder & CEO @ Bonsai: Patrick is Founder & CEO at Bonsai, a new online platform virtually pairing students and young professionals with mentors in professional fields. He is a New Yorker, born and raised in the Bronx, and an experienced leader who is deeply passionate about building companies. He is the former Founder & CEO of Source3 (acquired by Facebook), a data driven company in the copyright licensing space, enabling both physical & digital product creations around intellectual property. He also founded RightsFlow, a data driven enterprise music licensing and royalty company acquired by Google in 2011. At the time of acquisition, RightsFlow serviced over 20,000 music labels, distributors, and digital service providers and managed licensing for over 30 million recordings tied to billions of transactions. As part of Google, RightsFlow became an integral part of YouTube’s music monetization allowing for a substantial expansion of the scale of Content ID. Patrick has built businesses that have generated billions of dollars in revenue throughout his career and helped raise over $50 million in capital. He is a mentor and frequent lecturer for TechStars, IMPACT, DreamIt, Google IO, Google for Entrepreneurs, Cornell Tech and his alma mater, NYU.
Emma Weisberg - Global Head of B2B Marketing @ Waze: in her current role, Emma oversees a global team of marketers and analysts responsible for building the Waze Ads brand and supporting the company’s revenue growth goals. As a seasoned Marketing & Strategy executive within the technology sector, Emma has held prominent positions at both large market leaders (Google & Waze) and early-to-mid stage startups. Earlier in her career Emma spent eight years at Google in Global Sales Strategy as well as B2B Marketing, including leading Marketing for one of Google’s core Sales units with $1B in annual revenue. In 2013 Emma left Google because she had started her own company, a mobile app startup called Blinkbuggy, where she successfully raised over $1M dollars from investors to fund the development of the company, grew the user base to 50k through the use of strategic marketing and partnerships and was responsible for all key aspects of the company operations. Her work with Blinkbuggy has been written about in many business and tech publications including Forbes and TechCrunch.

 


Sao Paulo

Marcelo Toledo – Founder & CEO @ Klivo: with over 22 years of experience in technology startups, Marcelo is the Founder and CEO of Klivo, a HealthTech focused on improving the lives of chronic patients. Previously, he was the Founder and CEO of Zeever and Payleven. He was also Engineering Director of Nubank, CTO of Vex, CTO of Oi and CTO of LTM. Graduated in Marketing from Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), he also specialized in producing content for entrepreneurs, such as the book Dono (2013), Gestão 4.0 and Podcast Excepcionais (2020).
Fabiana Salles – Co-Founder & CEO @ Gesto: Fabiana is an engineer, entrepreneur and CEO at Gesto - a Data Driven Decision Making Platform that allows its clients to identify and manage risks, choose the best health insurance scheme for their employees and negotiate better rates. Recently, Fabiana became an Endeavor Entrepreneur. She is an expert in healthcare and business intelligence having more than 18 years experience developing and providing solutions in telemedicine, corporate health, health insurance among others. Fabiana is a foodie and loves trying and cooking different flavours.

 


Silicon Valley

Chris Misner - President, Roblox International @ Roblox: Chris Misner currently serves as President, Roblox International where he leads the company's international expansion and growth initiatives. Chris is an expert at creating high-functioning cross-border teams and bringing commercial opportunities from idea to scale. Prior to Roblox, he served as an internal entrepreneur at Apple Inc for 12 years – most recently launching the Apple Online Store in China and growing it to multiple billions in revenue while leading all of Apple’s e-commerce in Asia Pacific. Chris began his Internet career at Netscape, where he ran planning, pricing and M&A. After that, he led marketing, business development and international expansion on the executive teams of venture-funded start-ups Backflip and Good Technology (acquired by Motorola). Between his Architecture degree at Princeton and his MBA at Wharton, Chris was a management consultant and a United Nations observer of South Africa’s first free and fair election.
Kirthiga Reddy - Venture Partner @ Softbank Investment Advisers: Kirthiga is a technology industry executive with 20+ years of experience building high-growth global businesses and currently serves as Venture Partner with SoftBank Investment Advisers. Previously, she joined as the first Facebook India employee in July 2010 and was Managing Director of Facebook India and South Asia until her move to FB HQ in Aug 2016 when she was appointed as Global Client Partner and Emerging Markets Lead for Global Accounts. Kirthiga holds an MBA from Stanford University, where she graduated with top honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar, an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and a B.E. in Computer Science from Ambedkar University, India. She serves on Stanford Business School Management Board and ISB Next Generation Leadership Board. She is passionate about causes for children and about developing women leaders. Kirthiga has been involved with H2 across its India and Silicon Valley Chapters, including as an India Chapter Chair and 2017 Global Summit Chair.

 


Singapore

Dan Lynn – Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ ZUZU Hospitality: Dan has built his career at the intersection of travel and technology. He is currently the Co-founder of Singapore-based ZUZU Hospitality, the chain for independent hotels. ZUZU disaggregate the chain hotel experience, working with independent hotels to offer distribution and revenue management solutions. Dan previously served on the board of Swiss-based Movenpick Hotels and Resorts prior to its successful sale to Accor. Prior to that he led the HomeAway businesses – Stayz; Bookabach and HomeAway – in Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America. Before this Dan built Expedia in APAC, latterly as CEO of its joint venture with AirAsia, and previously as Global VP Search Marketing and Head of Customer Analytics, based in Seattle, USA. Dan, originally from the UK, started his career in London at McKinsey and at VC firm Smedvig Capital.
Greg Mittman – Co-Founder & COO @ MyRepublic: Greg is the Co-Founder & COO of MyRepublic, the world’s first telecommunications company powered by a proprietary cloud platform. He plays a key role in defining the company's regional growth strategy, with a focus on corporate development and investor relations. As VP Business Development at Alcatel-Lucent (Southeast Asia), Greg worked closely with Singapore’s IDA in representing the company through the government’s Intelligent Nation industry dialogue process, which ultimately resulted in a successful bid to supply $70m of infrastructure to the Singapore Nationwide Broadband Network. Originally an attorney, Greg practiced International Trade and Corporate law at Baker & McKenzie. Greg went on to co-found MCCI, a contact centre outsourcer with 1,100 stations, which was sold to Teleperformance for $40 million. He holds an MBA from INSEAD.

 


Tel Aviv

Itay Levy – Co-Founder and CEO @ Identiq, the first privacy-preserving, global, identity verification network. The Identiq service is built using the latest in cryptographic and multi-party computation technologies, meeting all privacy regulations. We allow network companies to help each-other validate users by vouching for their own users without exposing any of their private data. Prior to Identiq Itay was a co-founder and CEO of Appoxee, a mobile marketing automation platform designed to increase engagement, retention and revenue to mobile apps (now integrated with Teradata). Itay was also a part of the founding team of Buzzmetrics, a Social Media Research company acquired by Nielsen for $150M. Itay holds a BA in Computer Science and EMBA from Kellogg School of Management.
Ofir Yosef – CEO @ easy: Ofir is the CEO at easy, Israel's most popular service for local search with over 20% market share. Ofir is a veteran entrepreneur with a passion for building and scaling consumer products. Prior to leading Easy, Ofir Co-founded PhotoMania, one of the world's most popular photo editing and sharing services with a community of over 70M registered users. Ofir holds a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering from the Technion institute and had a long track record in R&D centers of major corporations such as Intel and Samsung.

 


Tokyo

Matthew Romaine – Co-Founder & CEO @ Gengo: Matthew is Co-Founder and CEO at Gengo, a human crowd-sourced AI training data platform launched from Tokyo, Japan. Gengo was backed by notable investors including 500Startups, Atomico, Intel Capital, and Recruit, and was acquired in January 2019 by Lionbridge. Prior to Gengo, Matthew was an audio research scientist at Sony Corporation. He studied music theory and computer science at Brown University, and received his Masters at Stanford University. As an early entrepreneur in Japan's internet tech venture ecosystem, Matthew is a big supporter of new generations of entrepreneurs and gives back through mentorship and the occasional investment.
Aiko Katoh – Regional Managing Director, Asia @ Houzz: Aiko is Regional Managing Director, Asia at Houzz. In her previous role as Managing Director, Japan she helped launch the company's operations in April 2015. She started her career at Goldman Sachs in the Tokyo and London offices, where she worked with institutional investors in the Asian equities markets and subsequently spearheaded new product initiatives targeting the EMEA market. She then launched Glossybox Japan, a beauty subscription service as the CEO, where she led the business to profitability within the first year. She has also advised and supported various start-ups in Japan and the US, primarily driving cross-border expansion. Aiko holds a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from INSEAD.

 

Matthew Romaine –
Co-Founder & CEO @ Gengo
Matthew Romaine –
Co-Founder & CEO @ Gengo

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Chair Emeriti