40 Under 40: 2018's class of young leaders in APAC marketing and communications

Alpha Xu | Chairman and founder | ASAP+ | China: When Alpha Xu founded the digital marketing focused ad agency FlipScript in 2007, he had a hunch that his investment in digital would pay off. Flipscript’s outstanding performance saw it acquired by a British company until 2015, when Xu re-bought it and combined it with his other holdings to form ASAP+, now a 150-strong agency with offices in Shanghai, London and Sydney. Xu is someone whose ability to think beyond eye-catching campaigns has seen him build a website and app for Starbucks in China, establish a digital marketing platform for Porsche suppliers and maintain strong partnerships with multinational brands from Van Cleef & Arpels to Tourism Australia for over five years. His recent focus is on ASAP+’s new Digital Ventures division, building tech products for clients, such as a WeChat mini program and AI chatbot for Tourism Australia, targeting Chinese tourists. Xu also makes a healthy office culture a priority, insisting that even ASAP+’s most junior employees have plenty of opportunities to communicate with top management.

Mandy Hou | General manager | Publicis Media | China: Mandy Hou secured a well-earned promotion to general manager of Publicis Media this year, where she leads a team of over 30 members. Hou joined the agency in 2015 to head up programmatic practice and was handed the responsibility for driving ecommerce as well within six months. Under her leadership, Publicis Media secured the Alimama Agency of the Year award in 2017 after Hou led the agency to pick up several major new contracts including the media business of Danone Tmall, whose media buy ROI Hou helped to grow by 30% in just eight months by instigating a new data leveraging strategy. Another example of Hou’s ability to deploy cutting-edge technology for astounding client benefit was an award-winning campaign for Mars Maltesers that used Alibaba data to deliver over 2 million sales in half an hour as well as track consumer habits long-term. “Mandy is a dreamer and also a doer” says Allen Xu, marketing director of Samsung, for whom Hou won an award less than a year after she started working on the brand. “You only need to give her a direction, she will then quickly deliver high quality work combining both forward-thinking strategy and clear execution roadmap which can always [exceed] your expectations.”

Mitchell McBeath | National managing director | Columbus, a Merkle Company | Australia: Mitchell McBeath’s career path well fits the description of him written by Columbus CEO Rebecca Tos as “an inspirational talent”. Having launched his own marketing company, The Web Marketers, at the age of 18, McBeath won a GroupM scholarship to become MediaCom Australia’s first search marketer and went on to earn four promotions in just five years. After a highly successful further four years as group account director at Reprise Media, McBeath came to Columbus in 2013 and was this year promoted to his current role, where part of his duties include managing integration following the agency’s acquisition by Merkle. A “positive and inspirational leader” who is also an active member of DAN’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, McBeath has done much for his employees, introducing a new flexible working hours programme, feedback system and training opportunities, resulting in a “substantially” lower than average attrition rate at the agency. He’s also overseen significant growth both in staff and new business billings, thanks to “the rare talent of being able to communicate with clients, partners and his team in a language that is engaging, informative and experienced”, according to Tos.

Mickey Zhang | CEO | [m]Platform China, GroupM | China: Starting her career in digital at eBay China as a marketing analyst, Mickey Zhang graduated through sales director roles at Google and Baidu before joining WPP in 2012 to establish their ecommerce marketing department in China, successfully serving over 30 top brands including Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. After a successful two-year stint helming Xaxis China she was appointed CEO of [m]Platform, GroupM’s media investment management group, last year and is in charge of its expansion in China even while she keeps on her other hat, overseeing the programmatic business for the whole network in China. Zhang was responsible for forging [m]Platform’s strategic partnerships with Alibaba and Tencent, a breakthrough given these brands’ usual ‘walled garden’ policies. The business unit has already attracted over 100 clients. When not busy exceeding her targets, Zhang is a conscientious leader and has introduced awards, fun activities and sharing sessions with her staff.

Calvin Chan | CEO | AdMaster | China: The turning point in Calvin Chan’s life, according to legend, was the moment he won a global talent selection program organized by Nielsen, becoming the only winner outside the US. This kickstarted a seven-year tenure in research and media at Nielsen, first in the States and then in China, before Chan switched to a six-year-old startup, AdMaster, in 2012 to become VP of strategy and insight. Chan was promoted to CEO of the company this year after making himself progressively more valuable thanks to what’s described as his ‘professional excellence’, belief in the ‘power of team’ and ‘east-meets-west’ leadership. Colleagues and clients alike see Chan as someone whose work will shape the digital advertising landscape in China, for which he advocates on a global level by speaking at major industry summits. Chan continues to play a critical role in improving anti-fraud measures too, raising awareness of invalid traffic among publishers and brands and helping the industry become more disciplined overall.

Beth O’Brien | Creative Group Head | Colenso BBDO | New Zealand: During Beth O’Brien’s first stint with Colenso BBDO in her native New Zealand, from 2012 to 2015, this master’s degree holder in fine arts and former practicing artist won the country its first ever D&AD black pencil for her creation of Pedigree K9FM, a radio station for dogs. O’Brien returned to the agency last year after equally successful stints at R/GA and Droga5 in New York, where among other work she co-created the ‘Role Models’ campaign for Hilary Clinton, which Forbes labelled “a masterpiece of political advertising”. Her career seems unquestionably on the rise: to work with O’Brien is to work with someone who creates “ads that look nothing like ads”, “goes out of her way to bring her whole agency up to speed”, and is “the flagbearer for a new wave of advertising creatives—a group that uses smarts, charm, and humour to fearlessly challenge the industry to use its power to make the world a better place” according to Thom Darlow, her creative partner.

Akira Suzuki | Creative director | Dentsu Inc | Japan: Akira Suzuki is hailed as “a new kind of creative director” and his work has been awarded at over 130 international awards. This MBA graduate started out by spending five years as a strategic planner with Dentsu, which he joined in 2007, and has also worked in public relations and promotions while attending to his creative projects, meaning he has always focused on client results and ‘creating a bigger conversation’ rather than creativity for its own sake. There are abundant examples of the remarkable impact this approach has for brands. A campaign by Suzuki for a deodorant brand achieved record sales for four years in a row. An integrated campaign for an alcohol brand saw the best sales in 17 years. Suzuki’s ‘Second Life Toys’ project for a Japanese organ transplant group earned him a place in Foreign Policy Magazine’s ‘100 Leading Global Thinkers’ list in 2016, alongside such luminaries as Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg. A person who excels at thinking broadly and taking his team’s various opinions into account to improve a solution, it’s likely that Suzuki’s star will continue to rise.

Kathryn Carter | General manager, AU/NZ | Snapchat | Australia: A person who has always been drawn to stories, Kathryn Carter has a background in traditional media, with roles at The Guardian, PBL Media and NewsCorp before she joined Snapchat in 2016. She brought a strong track record with her, having led her team of 80 at News Corp Australia to their most successful two years in recent history, and dived into the challenge of launching Snapchat commercially into the market. In the last year alone she has grown her team from three to over 40 people and inculcated a culture of aspiration, kindness and creativity among them, through various mentor-focused initiatives and ventures. “It is very rare to have someone at Kathryn's level—who is by far the busiest person—that still has the time and thought capacity to make you feel truly appreciated,” writes Snapchat senior creative strategist Kristy Emmanouil. Carter has this year also seen deals secured with all major holding groups, launched Snapchat’s auction platform and worked to develop an educational programme to teach the market about it.

Vincent Kan | Head of programmatic service unit, [m]Platform | GroupM | China: Vincent Kan joined GroupM from Xaxis, where he led an insight team that provided clients with analytics to help them understand the value of programmatic. Taking the job was a leap further into the world of programmatic and out of his comfort zone, but Kan has proved himself worthy of the challenge, growing the business fivefold in just 14 months. His team, built up from six people to 40, now provides consulting services on programmatic to leading clients including L’Oréal, Shell and Dell. 80% of these new employees were born ‘post-90s’, and Kan, a young leader himself, has successfully built a culture free from hierarchy where the opinions of all are respected and given equal weight, resulting in a 90% retention rate. Among Kan’s other recent achievements are the founding of GroupM’s Programmatic Academy Program, a course on programmatic usage on which he also lectures, and the initiation of a partnership between his team and Shanghai University’s advertising faculty that sees him deliver lectures and the agency offer six-month internships to students.

Cheryl Goh | Group vice president of marketing | Grab | Singapore: Before Cheryl Goh joined Grab in its pre-VC era in 2013, when operations were being run out of a storeroom in Malaysia’s Petaling Jaya, this business development chief and general manager with years of experience at brands including Friendster, The New Straits Times and Socialwalk (the business matchmaking platform she co-founded), used to say that marketing jargon intimidated her. While it is clear from her current position, which sees her lead over 300 marketers, that she’s overcome this feeling, Goh has been able to retain a fresh perspective on marketing that has helped Grab to its phenomenal success. Described as an “authentic leader” who “creates a safe environment for her team to experiment”, her achievements in the last 12 months include sharing Grab’s story with Silicon Valley talents at Block71 in San Francisco, speaking at the Tech in Asia 2018 conference and locking in partnerships to create GrabGerak in Indonesia, a specialized private hire car fleet for people with disabilities.

Anouk Van Bezu | Senior account director | Wunderman | Japan: With an established career in the Netherlands, where she worked for the interactive marketing agency Villa DM, storage firm Allsafe and shopper and brand activation agency Buro Benk, Anouk Van Bezu stepped out of her comfort zone to move to Asia last year. Taking the challenge as a stimulus, she has already succeeded in turning around and growing at-risk clients, contributing to an impressive 10% of total revenue, and leading a digital transformation project in Tokyo that so wowed the client that within three months they were requesting she move to Japan to lead the business on a permanent basis. Developing her team is at the core of Van Bezu’s working philosophy: she coaches and trains them daily and is admired for her direct approach to management. She’s also driving equality as part of the founding council for the #MeWeWPP initiative and has inspired young colleagues to join the executive committee too.

Apurva Chamaria | Chief revenue officer | RateGain | India: Hailed as “one of the most forward-thinking marketing leaders in the industry”, Apurva Chamaria has only been with the SaaS firm RateGain since March, but in that time he’s sent annual recurring revenue soaring from US$19 million to a giant US$100 million. It’s a strong fresh start for this ambitious leader, who joins RateGain from a 12-year stint with the multinational tech firm HCL Technologies. Chamaria left HCL as head of corporate marketing having successfully superpowered the brand onto the global radar, growing 35% year-on-year in value and scoring over 200 global marketing awards for campaigns he oversaw in the last four years. Besides pushing sales and innovation in his day job, Chamaria wears a couple of other hats, too: he’s one of India’s top ten ‘angel investors’, having put capital into and helped mentor some 26 high-potential ventures (he was recently appointed an advisor to the government’s Invest India initiative as a result); and he’s written two books, the first of which, on ‘social selling’, was even praised by Prime Minister Modi.

Dorothy Peng | Managing director | R/GA | Singapore: Dorothy Peng is described as someone who “draws energy from working within teams” and “goes out of her way to help others achieve their ambitions”. The same approach that makes her an admired leader internally—she’s a particular role model and advocate for women and has hired 15 women in the last 12 months alone—is “deeply respected” by clients, whose work she makes it her business to know inside and out. Peng joined R/GA in 2015 after working her way up the rungs at Saatchi & Saatchi and BBDO Singapore. Initially a Group Account Director managing R/GA Singapore’s Unilever business, she was promoted in April after growing the business organically and steering a series of successful pitches. She’s since built on these wins by overseeing the development of innovative integrated campaigns and a new global brand platform. Peng is also a proponent of design thinking and has forged several important partnerships with key local players to help drive a design-led approach.

Aykan Azar | Managing director | Octagon Southeast Asia | Singapore: Aykan Azar has reached this significant rung on his 13-year, 4-continent-spanning career ladder with the sports agency Octagon in prime time to set his experience into full play with two upcoming Olympics and a Rugby World Cup: he’ll play a key role in IPG’s ‘Olympic Taskforce’ over the next few years. A consummate sports fan who started out as a senior account executive with Octagon Germany, Azar now oversees 35 staff across Singapore and Japan (where he’s hired 10 staff in the last 12 months in Octagon’s new Tokyo office) but maintains his belief that whatever the fans care about should be the driving factor behind all work. This focus has seen him produce work that’s shifted multi-million dollar sponsorship strategies for major global brands; in the last 12 months alone, he’s led partnership deals and campaigns for Standard Chartered Bank, negotiated a Mastercard campaign and event with The Chainsmokers band in Singapore and acted as a key consultant to the Chinese brands making their debut at the FIFA World Cup. “Smart, articulate and hardworking”, Azar blends business acumen with a personable approach and has an open-door policy to help mentor his teams.

Caleb Bush | Managing director | GPJ Australia | Australia: The youngest ever MD in GPJ ANZ and the parent company’s entire global network, Caleb Bush’s age has not stopped him achieving some remarkable results in the 22 months since he was promoted to MD of George P. Johnson in Australia. He has turned the company’s Australian network into a full-service experiential agency and, by listening to client concerns and acting to embed innovation-centered thinking into everything the agency does, led it to record results including organic growth, new client and business wins and gross profitability that has set a new agency high. A new Bush project is CoLab, an ‘innovation and experience hub’ that allows clients to let their customers experience brands through immersive, sensorial experiences that use cutting-edge technologies. As someone whose ethos is described as “passionately human”, Bush’s unique blend of empathy and ambition has also galvanised his staff, resulting in attrition rates falling to an all-time low and staff survey scores reaching an all-time high, a significant achievement.

Emily Poon | Managing partner | Ogilvy | Singapore: 2018 marks a decade in the relationship between Emily Poon and Ogilvy Singapore, a partnership that has been more than fruitful for both parties. Poon, described as “extremely dedicated and sharp” is now one of four managing partners among 330 people in Singapore, a position she probably didn’t imagine she’d find herself in when she flunked her university entrance exams years earlier. This became a turning point in her life: Poon determinedly retook her tests, persuaded SMU to give her another chance and went on to become the youngest-ever head of Ogilvy Singapore’s PR business at 35. In Ogilvy’s re-founding this year, Poon saw a chance to champion the discipline of PR as key driver in the marketing mix and her work has steered the agency to 200% YOY revenue growth from PR-led integrated marketing, over 20 new clients including WeChat, social media revenues shooting up 73% year-on-year and multiple awards for her team. Popular and well-respected (particularly for her ‘leave-work-early-once-a-week’ initiative), Poon is a “rare all-rounder” with far to go.

James Hacking | SVP and Strategic Planning Director | BlueCurrent | Hong Kong: Tipped for success in his early career as an account manager at FleishmanHillard in London, James Hacking moved to the firm’s Asia headquarters in Hong Kong in 2006, keen to understand more about this region’s burgeoning tech scene. In a further five successful years with Fleishman Hacking put to task his passion for using communications to generate real business outcomes, managing campaigns and programmes for the likes of Fox International Channels, a growing Huawei and British Airways, for which he ran PR and issue management across 13 markets. In 2011 he set up the Hong Kong branch of Omnicom specialist shop BlueCurrent. A well-respected boss who is both humble and “super smart”, Hacking lives and breathes the mantra “culture is everything” and as a proponent of young industry talent he recently founded the Young Lions PR Competition in Hong Kong. Hacking has built BlueCurrent Hong Kong into an award winning agency revenue growth of over 30% year-on-year and a broad client base including some of the world’s biggest tech names, from Xiaomi and GoPro to ZTE. He was also one of the first communications practitioners to advocate the adoption of WeChat for reaching Chinese audiences.

Kasper Wandi | CEO | Consider iProspect | Malaysia: It is a tribute to Kasper Wandi’s fearless self-belief that he set up his own digital agency, Consider Digital, just ten days after he moved to Malaysia having fallen in love with the region following a stint in Sydney for Google, where he was a senior business development manager. Driven by Wandi’s strength and conviction, which convinced Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire the company as part of the iProspect network in 2016, Consider recently celebrated its fifth birthday. It now employs 100 people from 20 countries, manages over US$25m in digital media annually and is on track to double business for the second year in a row. Despite many exciting digital projects in the pipeline, for Wandi, one of the most satisfying elements of that success concerns the development of his staff: he cultivates a ‘start-up mentality’ in the agency and has hired an external business coach to help colleagues better understand themselves. Wandi also offers pro bono mentorship to a group of digital entrepreneurs in Malaysia.

Neha Bansal | Regional planning director, P&G ASEAN & Australia | Grey | Indonesia: At 32 one of the youngest in this year’s 40 Under 40 list, Neha Bansal’s talents as a young leader have been honed during a well-calculated career route. Bansal’s first foray into marketing was as an analyst at Ernst & Young, which was where she first worked with Unilever. She then moved to Grey in India before being reunited with Unilever as a strategist at PHD India, where she helped establish the brand’s award-winning radio channel Kan Khajura Tesan. Neha Bansal is currently back at Grey leading the Jakarta-based planning hub for one of P&G’s biggest brands, Pantene, covering six markets. Her most recent work, a song by a Pantene brand ambassador called ‘SiapaBilangGakBisa’ about what it’s like to be a woman in Indonesia, notched up 6 million listens in 2 weeks. This is only the latest evidence of Bansal fulfilling her reputation as someone who deploys her “strong hold over consumer insights” to create highly successful work that is “embedded in the country’s culture.” Expect more successes soon.

Simon Fiquet | Managing director, global series markets | Brand Expedia | Singapore: Simon Fiquet started his career as an aerospace engineer and once worked on a Mars-landing vehicle project. He moved into strategy at the Paris offices of (coincidentally) the consulting firm Mars & Co, before switching to Google where he was initially hired as an EMEA top accounts analyst for retail. Fiquet stayed eight years at the company, establishing regional and global partnerships and eventually moving into a favourite topic field (he has visited 55 countries), to head the APAC travel team at Google Singapore. This placed him well for a switch to Expedia in 2016 and his success at growing business and managing operations across Southeast Asia also saw him promoted in June, following a successful 2017 that included helping Expedia become Singapore’s top online travel brand for the first time and launch the first new ad campaign in India in four years. An energetic leader whose belief that “speed trumps perfection” means he’s a quick and creative problem-solver, Fiquet now manages several teams and is responsible for P&L across 30 global markets.

Daniel Lochmann | Global marketing communications director | Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group | Japan: Described as possessing a “unique blend of Western and Japanese business acumen”, Daniel Lochmann has been a Japan advocate since he graduated with a degree in Modern Japanese Studies in 2003 and became an international coordinator for the government in Kochi Prefecture, for which he won the Japan Foundation prize for global citizenship. His commitment to the country set in stone, he spent eight years with Edelman in Tokyo before moving to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2016. Lochmann was swiftly promoted from PR director to his present role at MHI, where his experience makes him well-placed to help the company shift its largely domestic image towards that of a more global brand. In pursuit of this goal, the last 12 months have seen Lochmann modernize MHI’s communications function and equip it to produce a stream of reputation-boosting content that efficiently reaches target audiences. One strong recent example was his campaign at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK, where the Mitsubishi Regional Jet made its first public flight demonstration; the tactic sent over 10,000 unique users, including various key stakeholders, to a special microsite.

Gemma Hudson | Managing director | WE Buchan | Australia: Gemma Hudson is described as “an inspirational role model for anyone within the industry looking to progress their career”, and it is easy to see why. She moved to Australia from the UK in 2006, working for Burson Marsteller, Edelman and the Denstu PR agency Haystac before she joined WE Buchan in 2013 as one of the youngest GMs in the country. Her drive, her can-do attitude and the generous way she shares her time and knowledge with her team has seen her promoted twice (this year to managing director). She also became an equity partner in the company after just nine months and oversaw a five-year growth plan that led to record-setting performance over the last 12 months. This includes revenue and fees that are above the industry average, 37 new clients, a 90% staff retention rate and significant progress towards modernization: a 36% decline in earned-media work has been balanced by a 44% rise in digital and social work. Internally, Hudson has implemented various staff support programmes and Hudson also leads the agency’s work for Sarz Sanctuary, which helps people suffering from traumatic grief.

Gautam Mehra | Chief Data Officer | Dentsu Aegis Network (South Asia) | India: Gautam Mehra has been at the forefront of digital innovation since 2001, when he set up a web development practice before most people had any idea of how big the internet might get. He’s worked in data analysis for over 10 years, bringing his insights to the digital agencies Pinstorm and Ignitee before founding his own full-service agency, Ultraviolet Digital Solutions, in 2011. Moving on again in 2014, he headed the social-media business for iProspect India, where he was instrumental in building digital best practice for brands like ICICI Bank and General Motors. Mehra is now writing the data story for the whole DAN network, and is hailed “an absolute asset” for the group by chairman and CEO Ashish Bhasin. Driven by a true passion for what he does, and with the benefit of his established relationships at Google and Facebook, Mehra has established India as a testing ground for more than 10 advanced data-driven products that have been exported across 35 DAN markets, and has turned the data-science division of DAN into a highly profitable unit.

Ida Siow | Head of Planning, Singapore and SEA | J. Walter Thompson Worldwide | Singapore: The way Ida Siow has played her career could be likened to a highly successful pinball game. Marked out as a future Singaporean public service leader, Siow was the first ever Singapore Scholar to walk away from the money and security of that path to pursue a career in advertising, much to the industry’s advantage. She excelled as a planner at DDB and JWT Singapore, then moved to London and, with BBH and the Guardian, worked on the Three Little Pigs campaign that won seven Cannes Lions. She completed a five-year stint with Ogilvy in Shanghai and finally returned to Singapore to become the youngest person and first female Singaporean to head up a regional planning practice last year. Siow is “criminally astute” and “a firebrand who blazes a trail to fresh thinking”, say her senior colleagues. A champion of overarching brand strategy rather than knee-jerk tactics, Siow has elevated the importance of planning within JWT and been a pivotal player in key new client winnings, including the hotly contested Singapore Bicentennial commemorations, worth some US$2.2 million. She’s also leading growth through brand-consultancy work for core clients and has overseen JWT becoming the second-most awarded agency in 2018 at the Effies.

Leon Liu | Head of content marketing| BBDO Shanghai | China: Heading BBDO Shanghai’s content-marketing arm at the age of just 31, making him one of the youngest on this year’s ’40 Under 40’ list, Leon Liu consistently exceeds the expectations of his age group. He first joined the agency in 2010 and excelled as a strategic planner for major BBDO clients including Pepsi and Starbucks. After a couple of years refining his talents at Grey Hong Kong, Liu moved back to BBDO Shanghai last year with a bold request to set up a content-marketing team. Although this placed him outside his planning comfort zone, Liu has in the last year succeeded in expanding his team from one intern to 10 people with strong and diverse experience. He’s also been involved in some powerful campaigns. One for McDonald’s, titled ‘Full-heart support during Gaokao’ and aimed at helping students at exam time, won a Grand Prix for Effective Social Strategy at this year’s Warc Awards and encouraged a record-breaking 12 million pieces of user-generated content. Christine Xu, CMO of McDonald’s China, said this case proved Liu’s ability to “precisely capture human insight and apply it into social-media planning”.

Phang Mei Jeng | General manager | Ensemble Worldwide | Malaysia: Phang Mei Jeng’s hunger for learning saw her graduate from the UK and move to Malaysia to cut her teeth on data and CRM as a senior account executive at Wunderman. She then spent around six years at Y&R and Dentsu, picking up the name ‘fixer’ for her ability to turn around tough accounts, before moving to Shanghai for a rapid rise through the ranks leading teams and winning work at BBDO Proximity. Back in Malaysia and with Ensemble for just over a year, Phang has been applying this formidable set of experiences to help the agency grow—eight new clients and new projects from existing clients have resulted in 121% year-on-year revenue growth—and build her team’s talent. A personable boss who is known as ‘Mama MJ’ to her 50 staff (and her 2-year-old), Phang has introduced weekly one-on-one, no-phones-allowed sessions with her staff and is a strong proponent of time off to recharge. She herself took time out a few years back to start her own granola business and trade equities, experiences she says she still draws lessons from today.

Samantha Jackson | Co-founder and managing director | Percolate Galactic | Indonesia: Think back to 2009. America was in the grip of economic crisis and the government was making stinging cuts to social services. Among those feeling the impact was Samantha Jackson, who responded by leaving almost a decade of experience in charitable initiatives behind and heading to Indonesia to become a teacher. Within three years she’d founded the zanily-named Percolate Galactic, now a ‘global youth creative laboratory’ with 30 staff, which is continuing the socially focused theme of the life Jackson left behind in the States for clients including Google, USAID and Save The Children. A standout recent project is the agency’s rebranding and launch—to 56 countries—of the Springster initiative for the non-profit organization Girl Effect, which helps empower girls across the developing world. Over 2.5 million unique users have visited the Indonesian site alone, and the project has garnered praise from Facebook COO and women’s champion Sheryl Sandberg. Jackson’s commitment to women continues internally: 70% of her staff is female, a ratio virtually unheard of in Indonesia. In August 2016, Percolate Galactic became Indonesia’s first Certified B Corporation, a label that proves it meets “the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance” and a testament to Jackson’s hard work.

Radhe Vaswani | Chief operating officer, global clients | MullenLowe Profero | Hong Kong: Radhe Vaswani’s career with MullenLowe Profero spans seven years and five markets—so far. Vaswani has been fascinated by the possibilities of digital since the age of seven, when she volunteered at an IT centre for girls in Jamaica. Authenticity informs her client partnerships—she’s described as having “extraordinary client empathy”—and she has a well-justified reputation for helping legacy clients such as HSBC and Harley Davidson modernize their offering. In one recent example, Vaswani led the launch of an app and website for Millennium Hotels and Resorts, leading to a booking increase of 18%. A truly global citizen and believer in the power of shared ideas, Vaswani spent two months living in New York this year in order to develop and discuss best practices she has built in Asia. She’s also established various admirable social initiatives at MullenLowe Profero, including support for the nonprofit AboutAsia, which helps schools in Cambodia, and regular career advice sessions and a mentoring programme for her team.

Raymond McKay | Creative director and co-founder | RUN | New Zealand: In 2015, after stints as an art director at a host of top agencies including Colenso BBDO, TBWA Worldwide, Ogilvy & Mather and Designstein, Raymond McKay channeled all of his entrepreneurial nous into the agency he co-founded, RUN. From a standing start, RUN has hit its stride quickly, thanks in part to McKay’s drive and passion for ideas: revenue is up 41% and clients have doubled in the last year. The agency’s work for Niue Tourism, a small Pacific island, saw the country become one of the first in the world to ban plastic bags, and the campaign was a finalist in this year’s New Zealand Marketing Awards. Niue Tourism CEO Felicity Bollen said McKay “consistently goes above and beyond and pushes us to think differently”. As one of only a handful of Māori creative directors in the world, McKay is serious about championing diversity and was recently awarded a scholarship by the Auckland Business Chamber, to find other successful Māori and Pacific Island leaders to act as role models for young people.

Sayaka Ohno | Senior account director | TBWA Hakuhodo | Japan: Sayaka Ohno joined TBWA Hakuhodo from JWT Japan as an account supervisor in 2011. In the last seven years, this “shrewd” marketer has been promoted twice while building a wealth of experience across different categories, brands and industry positions. That jourbey has also given her a firm belief that creativity should be rooted in all work systems and styles. An example of Ohno’s “strong creative mind” was her work last year for P&G’s Gelball 3D detergent launch campaign. Working on the insight that customers want ‘freshness’ in detergents, the campaign gained the brand its highest ever share of product sales and, in turn, kickstarted the engine of success that led to TBWA Hakuhodo being named P&G’s official agency—and Ohno taking home Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Japan/Korea Account Person of the Year 2017 award. P&G brand manager Sayuri Takayama says Ohno leads “the most creative, in-touch and passionate team of creatives in Japan”. Ohno is also a champion of women in the workplace, playing a key role in TBWA’s ‘Take the Lead’ initiative to increase the number of female leaders in the agency, a particular challenge in Japan.

Lisa Guo | China general manager | Xaxis China | China: Lisa Guo joined Xaxis four years ago from the Chinese ad tech giant Miaozhen Systems where, as marketing director, she oversaw the company’s rise from obscurity to significant renown. At Xaxis, this University of Peking MA holder has worked with an impressive number of brands across a wealth of sectors, and her combination of dedication and deep understanding of China’s digital ecosystem earned her a promotion last year to her current role. Here she is excelling, leading the brand to double-digit year-on-year growth, multiple awards and the kudos of making China Xaxis’s second-strongest market. What makes Guo truly stand out is her fervour for the field of programmatic advertising: she believes wholeheartedly that this is where the industry’s future lies. Skilled at leveraging the power of GroupM beyond Xaxis, Guo has been working with the agency’s Brand Safety Group to enforce stringent systems that protect Xaxis’s products and platforms from ad fraud.

Amaresh Godbole | CEO | Digitas | India: Amaresh Godbole is “one of the few people in our industry who truly understands the power of combining data, creativity, media and technology to deliver successful marketing outcomes”, according to Saurabh Varma, CEO of Publicis Communications India. This glowing review sums up the reasons behind Godbole’s successful rise, from his early days in the industry as a brand associate at Leo Burnett India, through to his role as group brand director at Bates Asia, before he fully submitted to the forthcoming digital wave and joined Digitas in 2009. By 2015, when he was just 32, he had transformed this small tech shop into a fully-fledged digital agency of 250 people and he continues to drive success for Digitas with an uncanny eye for trends and being able to position the agency for future developments. The agency has expanded 53% in the last 12 months through its integration with SapientRazorfish, making it now the largest digital agency in India, and also through organic growth: under Godbole’s capable leadership (he was promoted to CEO in August), it’s expected to continue to go from strength to strength.

Andrew Collins | CEO | Mailman | China: Andrew Collins purchased Mailman, a small Shanghai-based media consulting business, in 2007 at 27, three years after he first visited the city. The Australian-born business graduate remains CEO and has transitioned the agency into China’s leading sports-digital shop. But the last six years have also seen him co-found and invest in the social media management company Kawo, initially a side project that has now split off on its own, and establish two other companies, Fanstang Celebrity Entertainment & Endorsement and Transition China. This “tireless worker” hasn’t slowed down of late: a new partnership last month with Seven League brings his total number of global sports clients to over 80 and ushers in a new ambition to see Mailman build the world’s first ‘global digital sports consulting business’. Collins puts directness and transparency—in both work and office culture—at the heart of his firm and is a big believer in continuous learning, regularly taking executive courses online and engaging with the media to share his knowledge.

Bea Atienza | Chief strategy officer | Dentsu Aegis Network | Philippines: A digital strategy pro, Bea Atienza’s expertise has been in high demand since she entered the advertising world. Rising swiftly through roles with McCann, Wunderman and Edelman in different parts of Asia, she returned to her home nation, the Philippines, this year well-equipped for the challenge of her first C-suite role. Valued for her unique professional perspective, which combines brand planning with a strong command of digital data and insights, she excels at looking at the big, long-term picture and drives her team accordingly. Her opinion is also frequently sought by the wider industry and beyond, in the education sector: she is now a brand consultant for the non-profit Teach For the Philippines. Internally, Atienza has only been in the role for five months but is already developing new proprietary tools for clients even while she prepares to start taking a Masters in Strategic Design and Management, learning long-distance from Parsons School of Design in New York.

Sidharth Bhasin | Associate director APAC media procurement | Johnson & Johnson | Singapore: Pursuing his desire to make a positive social impact through his work, Sidharth Bhasin moved brand side in 2015 from agency roles in Dubai, where he grew up, and Singapore. He is now the regional lead for Johnson & Johnson in 14 APAC markets, overseeing media billings worth multimillions. Bhasin was an early achiever in the marketing world, helping his father come up with packaging and product ideas in the family factory as a boy, and this marketing MBA-holder has been consistently earmarked for leadership throughout his career. A man who is not satisfied if he’s not pioneering something, Bhasin is currently engaged in an overhaul of the way J&J assesses their media agency digital buys and is helping to drive digital transparency. While described by former Publicis boss Gerry Boyle as “relentlessly focused on his work”, he’s also found time outside work to establish Freegood, an app that aims to reduce waste and stop unwanted items simply ending up in landfills.

Disha Goenka | Director, business marketing, Asia-Pacific | Twitter | Singapore: Disha Goenka started her career at Google, battling her way through 12 rounds of interviews for a position at the company’s India headquarters, which opened around the time she graduated. A decade at the company and a further four years at Twitter, where she initially joined as international head of strategic client solutions, has given her an unrivalled ability to plumb consumer insights that deliver effective storytelling. One recent example of the “bigger, bolder marketing approach” she’s brought to Twitter has seen her work to engage agency buyers and planners with the company’s ad offerings via a #TweetToTheTop campaign. This engaged over 600 rising stars across 11 digital media agencies with workshops and training sessions, ultimately increasing revenue and bookings. Goenka is also helping establish Twitter’s B2B identity in China with a new value proposition and tagline that’s earned close to 50 articles in local media—and her #TwitterFronts event, launched in 2017, this year gathered 300 top marketers and publishers who announced over 50 new content partnerships and deals.

Jonathan Beh | Head of Cadreon China | Cadreon China | China: Headhunted to IPG in December, Jonathan Beh is already making his mark at Cadreon by championing a switch to automated and machine-driven buying and introducing a training programme to upgrade planners’ digital and ecommerce skills. Beh’s leadership style is heavily focused on learning and sharing new findings: he does this on a broader level himself by relentlessly bringing ideas to the agency’s senior management team as well as speaking at industry conferences to share his enthusiasm for brands adopting a data-led approach to marketing. This belief in data is something innate to Beh. He holds a master’s degree in ecommerce engineering and built a deep understanding of digital search during stints at Vizeum UK and Mindshare Worldwide, with whom he relocated to Shanghai in 2013. Beh’s popularity as a leader is exemplified by the number of his former staff who have followed him to IPG.

Fleire Castro | CEO and founder | Third Team Media | Philippines: One client said he would recommend this Cebu-based digital and social media agency founder’s work with his eyes closed. But her achievements go beyond client satisfaction. Within the last few years, Fleire Castro has become an advisory board member at Southwestern University PHINMA; established bloodlife.ph, a healthtech app for Facebook Messenger that connects blood donors with those who need blood; and founded Project BASS, a government-partnered project to measure bandwidth speed and quality among Filipino telcos. A major youth advocate, she employs largely millennials at Third Team Media with the aim of proving they are not as unruly as people think. This month, she will hold the Philippines’ first Action Civics Fair, a pitching competition based on a similar event in the US for young people to showcase digital work for social good. In her limited spare time, Castro coaches fellow entrepreneurs and blogs about her work. Her mantra, ‘Ambitious Achievements’, could not be more apt.

Matthew Cheng | Managing director | DDB Beijing and Guangzhou | China: Before Matthew Cheng became an MD at DDB, he tackled account and brand management roles at BBDO, Leo Burnett and Grey with the tenacity you might expect from a black-belt martial artist. Along the way, Cheng developed a justified reputation as an agency-transformer: in his last role at Leo Burnett he helped double business revenue in two years. It is hoped he’ll do the same for DDB China. When Cheng joined last year, the agency was at ‘rock bottom’ with just one client in Guangzhou and the two main clients in Beijing about to leave. Flexing his problem-solving muscles, in just 12 months Cheng has managed to hold on to and grow these pieces of business and win more that is so far contributing over a third of revenue. He has also broken the agency-consultancy divide by establishing an innovative partnership with EY to work on a client project. Expect more from this talented individual in the future.

Robert Harvey | CEO NZ | Dentsu Aegis Network | New Zealand: What earns a person the title ‘Human of the Year’ in a country- and industry-wide people’s choice award? In Robert Harvey’s case, it has been a mountain of hard work, which has earned him an impressive career path spanning business director roles for Starcom and Mindshare, followed by managing director positions at Publicis Mojo and Carat NZ before he joined Dentsu Aegis Network in 2014. He has also shown an unwavering commitment to creating a better agency model in New Zealand. What does a better agency model in New Zealand look like to Harvey? One that is defined by digital innovation, agility and care for people. Harvey has that rare ability to convert his breadth of experience into transformational growth for his agency while remaining a “grounded and connected” boss whose staff have an engagement rate 10% above the benchmark, the highest in DAN APAC. “Rob is the quintessential master of balancing the needs of all, living the value of integrity at all times and always looking forward,” comments Sharon Moffatt, head of marketing services at ASB Bank.