2018 FEATURED PARTICIPANTS
The Chief Executive
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
People’s Republic of China
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Featured Participant
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Mr Yau assumed the post of the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development on July 1, 2017. His portfolio covers policy areas from trade, commerce to telecommunications and broadcasting, and from promotion of creative industries, intellectual property and consumer protection to boosting inward investment and tourism development.
Mr Yau has his full career in the public service. Before taking up the current post, Mr Yau was the Director of the Chief Executive's Office from 2012 to 2017, assisting the Chief Executive in formulating policies and setting policy goals and priorities. He was the Secretary for the Environment from 2007 to 2012, overseeing policies on environmental protection, energy, nature conservation and sustainable development.
Mr Yau started his civil service career as an Administrative Officer in 1981. During his long service as a civil servant, he held various positions, including Director of Information Services, Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower, Deputy Director-General of Trade and Industry as well as Director-General of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Washington, DC, USA.
Mr Yau graduated from the University of Hong Kong. He received further education at Oxford University and at Harvard University.

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Min-Liang Tan is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Razer Inc (HKEX Stock Code: 1337). He is also Chairman and CEO of THX Ltd.
His leadership has resulted in the growth of Razer from a two-man startup to a multinational market leader that was honored on Fortune Magazine’s “Unicorn List” in 2015 (private companies valued at US$1 billion or more). Razer went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2017.
Tan was named one of "The 25 Most Creative People in Tech" by Business Insider in 2015. Juniper Research distinguished him as a “Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech” while Tech in Asia has ranked him No. 1 of the 30 top Southeast Asia tech founders. In 2016, he was named one of the “Straits Times Asians of the Year”.
Tan graduated from the National University of Singapore Law School.

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Goodwin is the Founder and Managing Principal of Gaw Capital Partners, a uniquely positioned real estate private equity fund management company that focuses on markets in Greater China and other high barrier to entry markets globally. Gaw Capital has raised five commingled funds targeting the Greater China and APAC regions since 2005. The firm also manages value-add/opportunistic funds in Vietnam and the US, a Pan-Asia hospitality fund, a UK creative office vehicle, and also provides services for separate account direct investments globally. Gaw Capital Partners has raised equity in excess of USD$9.6 billion as of 2018 Q1 and currently commands assets of over USD$18 billion under management encompassing residential developments, retails centers, hotels, commercial and logistic properties.
Goodwin has over 20 years of real estate investment and management experience in the United States and Asia. He founded Downtown Properties in 1996 and serves as Managing Principal. He’s especially interested in re-positioning distressed heritage properties. These include the renovation of the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and conversion of over 456,000 square feet of empty historical buildings into hip residential lofts in downtown Los Angeles including the acclaimed Douglas Building. He also served as Vice Chairman of Pioneer Global Group and former Chairman of Global Gateway.
Goodwin received a BS in Civil Engineering from the School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, a BS in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a MS in Construction Management from Stanford University.

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YEECHOO gives customers the chance to wear their dream designer dress with the swipe of a finger - but for a fraction of the cost. With more than 30,000 subscribed members, the Hong Kong-based online designer rental service offers hundreds of options from labels including Victoria Beckham, Badgley Mischka and Oscar de la Renta. YEECHOO also offers accessories and styling tips to complete the look. Zhang raised financing from Alibaba Entrepreneurship Fund in May 2016 and plans to expand Yeecho to Macau, China and Southeast Asia later this year.

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Korean-American singer Eric Nam is one of the most recognized names and faces in Korea's entertainment industry today. Named one of GQ Korea's "Men of the Year" for 2016, Eric not only sings but hosts multiple TV shows and is the go-to for International collaborations and interviews. He's worked with names such as Timbaland, fellow Forbes 30 Under 30 singer Gallant, and most recently interviewed Emma Watson, Chris Pratt, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Eddie Redmayne, to name a few. Nam was also the founding director Kollaboration's Boston chapter, a nonprofit that promotes Asian-American talents across the U.S.

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Tommaso Tamburnotti and Augustin Ceyrac are the cofounders of Easyship, a Hong Kong-based e-commerce platform that aims to simplify logistics for small to medium-sized e-commerce sellers to help them become globally competitive. Easyship works with more than 100 couriers and provides visibility on international shipping regulations, taxes and duties from one account. Today they have a team of 31 people in four offices around the world, and are used by 15,000 businesses. They were awarded Best Technology Company of the Year (startup) 2017 by Computer World.

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Zeman is a serial entrepreneur and the chairman and 'father' of Lan Kwai Fong Group, a major property owner and developer of one of the most popular entertainment and nightlife districts in Hong Kong. Besides being the Chairman of Hong Kong Ocean Park for over a decade, he is now the Honorary Advisor to the Park and serves as a member of the Board of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, and is the Chairman of its Performing Arts Committee. He was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal in 2011 and the Businessman of the Year at the Hong Kong Business Award in 2008. In 2001, Dr. Zeman was appointed a Justice of the Peace in Hong Kong.

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Tak Lo is a Partner at Zeroth, and invests in ambitious founders building AI companies that solves tomorrow’s problems. Zeroth is one of the most active AI investors in the world, having invested in 34 companies. Tak started his career in the US Army. He graduated from the London Business School and the University of Chicago.

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Sally & Malcolm Begbie have served developing nations since 1979.
Initially, Sally worked with NGOs providing communications/PR services pro bono. Malcolm, her husband, a Chartered Accountant, provided financial services.
In 1995, the couple birthed the Crossroads Foundation and remain as Executive Directors. Crossroads brings people together to combat world need in four ways:
- Global Distribution: The Hong Kong community generously donates excellent quality goods. These are distributed to people in need, in Hong Kong and around the world.
- Global Handicrafts sells goods from people in need within Hong Kong, and around the world, on a fair trade basis. Aid helps people today. An income helps them tomorrow.
- Global Hand is a match-making service which links for-profit and non-profit organisations who want to partner to help meet global need.
- Global X-perience offers simulation x-periences in which participants step, briefly, ‘into the shoes’ of people facing global challenges: war, poverty, HIV vulnerability, blindness, environmental challenges, hunger, etc.
Crossroads’ is headquartered in Hong Kong on 9 acres provided by the government, with additional bases in UK/Europe, USA & Australia. Its international team, all of whom are volunteers, numbers 100.
In 2012, Sally and Malcolm both received the Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) award by the Australian Government for their “distinguished service to the international community in the provision of humanitarian relief, particularly through the Crossroads Foundation, and as a significant contributor to United Nations efforts to connect business organisations with those in need.”

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Bobby Bao is a cofounder and managing director of Monaco Technology, a payment and cryptocurrency platform founded in 2016. Bao and the team aspire to push local mass-market cryptocurrency adoption, and as part of that, have created the Monaco visa card and mobile app, which allows users to buy, exchange and spend cryptocurrencies at preferable interbank rates. Monaco is also a cryptocurrency (MCO), and in 2017 it raised $26.7 million in a successful token sale.

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Lau, a Yale economics grad, came back to China in 2012 to pursue her young lifetime's passion for social causes and philanthropy. Aiming to empower the next generation to donate to organizations with impact and accountability, PIM has enlightened more than 1,000 individuals. Most alumni have made donations or gone on to work full-time in the social sector. With a recent startup, Kliptap, Lau has gotten into crowd-funding campaigns of social causes as well, taking a 5% cut of transactions. Remarkably, Lau started her first charitable organization, Ember, at the age of 16, and raised $300,000 to support girls' education in rural China.

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Founded in 2016, VeeR VR is a China-based platform for virtual reality content. Less than a year since its launch, it has attracted content creators from 180 countries, who can upload their VR clips to the website and work with the company to integrate them with different hardware. VeeR VR also developed an editing tool for 360-degree video called VeeR Editor. So far, it has raised $17.5 million in funding from investors including DCM, Bertelsmann Asia Investment and Hony Capital.
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Esther Wang is the founder of Joytingle, a healthcare education startup that specialises in child life programmes, patient engagement, paediatric education and hospital play speciality. The company designs and produces an educational toy called "Rabbit Ray" that educates children about medical procedures such as injections, vaccinations and intravenous drips. Products currently used by by leading hospitals across 5 countries. Customers include, Johns Hopkins Children’s Centre (USA), Great Ormond Street Hospital, Evelina London Children’s Hospital (UK) and National University Hospital (Singapore). In April 2016, Joytingle was highlighted in Singapore’s Parliament as an example of “innovation by design” by Minister of Finance, Minister Heng Swee Keat. Wang won the Shell LiveWIRE Global Top Innovator Award in 2016 graduated from Nanyang and spoke at TedxSingapore in 2012. She graduated from Technological University with a bachelor of fine arts in product design.

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In 2015, Shi Xiaogang founded augmented reality (AR) startup Xloong in Beijing. The company utilizes this frontier technology -- which superimposes virtual information on the real-world view -- to make consumer and enterprise gears for various uses. While their sports goggles can assist cyclists with AR-based digital maps, Xloong’s “Techlens T2” glasses enable remote equipment maintenance by scanning machines and sharing real-time video feeds with engineers. They can then examine the feeds and input their feedback, in the form of AR-based marks and drawings to show malfunctions more clearly, and allow for remote assistance. “I believe AR will replace PCs and smartphones to become the next computing platform,” says Shi. “The technology has huge potential and many applications, which is why I chose to start a related business.” Aided by government grants, Xloong is now making AR glasses for Chinese police, which are expected to ship later this year. The connected gear, which look similar to ordinary spectacles, can recognize faces and cross reference them with profiles on China’s national ID databases to identify potential suspects. If there’s a match, a red alert combined with the person’s name and ID number is projected onto an officer’s real world view, helping to make a catch.

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In 2016, Leng Xiaokun founded robotics startup Leju in Shenzhen. The company's main product is Aelos, a humanoid robot that can perform motions such as dancing, singing, as well as taking voice commands. During 2017's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it also unveiled Talos, its latest version of service and companion robots. Leju Robotics has received $7.4 million in financing from Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent.
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Waldo is cofounder & CEO of Mantra, China’s first social impact-focused fashion brand. In 2016, Mantra’s first product line sold out within 72 hours, following Waldo and Mantra’s story going viral and reaching 300 million views on Weibo and WeChat. Along with non-profit sister organization Education in Sight, which Waldo cofounded with Andrew Shirman in 2012, the team has applied a buy-one-give-one model to give over 23,000 free eyeglasses and 170,000 free eye exams to children in need in rural China.

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Shriyans Bhandari and Ramesh Dhami are both athletes. As they burned through shoes running they became increasingly aware of the waste they were creating and decided to do something good, so they cofounded Greensole. The startup gave them a platform to recycle discarded shoes and donate the upcycled footwear to children in need for free. Partnering with heavyweight corporates such as the Tata Group, Rolls Royce and Just Dial, they now have their own repurposed retail footwear line available online.

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Sang Hun Oh and Seung Bae Son cofounded robotics startup LUXROBO, which built MODI, a module system for DIY IoT and robotic creations. MODI makes it easy to create robots, like playing with Lego blocks, to make robotics technology more accessible. LUXROBO works with schools and education institutions to deploy MODI for robotics education. CEO Oh has won around 170 awards at robotics competitions and served as a coach for South Korea’s national robot team for five years. CTO Son is an electric engineer who has worked on hardware from electro-optical infrared for helicopters to underwater drone control display units.

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Simmendinger is the founder and CEO of Soundbrenner Ltd., which makes wearable smart metronomes for musicians who need help establishing a rhythm. Before starting the company in 2014, the German national based in Hong Kong got a degree in business administration from schools in Germany and Mexico. He published his first non-fiction book at age 24. Simmendinger speaks four languages and goes backpacking around the world.

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In 2014 Boston University graduate Dhruv Sharma founded GuestHouser, India's "version of AirBNB," which began as a simple way of connecting people wanting to rent their properties, with vacationers. Today, the 150-member GuestHouser team manages India's largest network of holiday homes for over 130,000 properties across 2,200 destinations around the world. Through the portal one can discover, book, and list vacation homes.

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Stanislava Pinchuk (Miso) is an artist that maps areas of conflict around the world, data mapping how landscape is changed by political events with tiny dots. Her practice examines the ways in which ground retains memory of violence. Crossing disciplines between science & art, her gallery work has put forward a new research question within topographic & political spheres. She’s mapped nuclear zones and topographies of changing borders in war, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Miso has worked with international clients such as Chanel, Tiffany & Co., and Nike -- for whom she is currently fronting a global campaign and has tattooed her drawings on singers Florence Welch and Sam Smith.

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15-year-old Reyhan Camalova invented a product called 'Rainergy' – designed to harvest rainwater as a source of electricity. She was the youngest attendee of the 8th Global Entrepreneurship Summit held in India in November 2017, and received a special mention in Ivanka Trump's speech there. She also won an Honourable Mention at the Model UN Conference in Azerbaijin in 2017 and made it to the final stage of the competition at ClimateLaunchpad, Europe's largest green business idea competition.

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Vinesh Sinha is the founder and Managing Director of Fathopes Energy, which he set up in 2010 with a refund from London’s School of Commerce after he dropped out. The company turns waste oils from the food industry in Malaysia into biofuels that he sells to companies globally. Consequently, FatHopes takes waste oils out of the food chain and reduces carbon emissions. FatHopes had sales of $147.6 million last year and are looking for other growth opportunities. Sinha was nominated for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award 2017.

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Scott Stiles is the cofounder of Hong Kong-based Fair Employment Agency. The startup aims to improve the working opportunities of migrant workers from the Philippines by not charging them job placement fees, which sends many people into a spiral of debt. It instead asks employers to shoulder the cost of labor immigration. Since it was founded in 2014, the non-profit startup has saved some 2,000 Filipino workers almost three million dollars in recruitment debt.

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At the age of 24, Parsons' graduate Aakriti Kumar returned to India to set up Differniture – a sustainable, design-based furniture atelier and design-house. The award-winning designer follows a cradle-to-cradle ethos, which means her manufacturing processes are non-toxic, zero-waste, and utilizes responsibly purchased reclaimed wood. Kumar’s next project includes working on an eco-conscious cabin community in the Himalayas.

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After getting engaged to her girlfriend, Australian Tara Baker realised just how unrepresented the LGBTQ+ community was in mainstream wedding media. Frustrated with the lack of choice, Baker launched Dancing With Her, the world's first wedding magazine focusing on LGBTQ+ women who were in love. It was first launched online in 2016 and then in print in 2017.

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Lim Yuet Kim, Lee Swee Lin and Ling Shook Shian are the cofounders of the Picha Project. Named after a young refugee boy, their social enterprise empowers refugee families in Malaysia by connecting those who have cooking skills with companies, organizations and individuals needing catering. Home-cooked traditional food is first prepared by refugees, before it is packaged and delivered by the Picha Project to the end consumer. Around 50% of all revenue goes to the refugee family who did the cooking. The three entrepreneurs won the Edge Inspiring Young Leader's Award in 2017.

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Founded in 2014, Bitspark is a blockchain-based remittance platform operating out of Hong Kong. By capitalizing on this emerging technology, the company claims users can send cash overseas with faster speed but at cheaper exchange rates. So far, Bitspark has established a presence in markets including Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Ghana as well as Nigeria, with more than 150 money transfer operators as its partners. It also operates an online platform for crypto-currency and Bitcoin trading, raising $4.5 million through the sale of its token currency Zephyr. Last year, Bitspark received investment from RGAx, the innovation accelerator of St.Louis-based life insurance company Reinsurance Group of America, to further its expansion among traditionally unbanked populations.

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Togo Ogi cofounded the company – which has raised nearly $1 million – with Waseda University classmate Ryushi Shiohama to train people for sports like weightlifting without a real instructor. With its augmented reality system called ARC Mirror, the trainer’s image is projected onto a full-size mirror to show form. Meanwhile, people practicing can see their reflection and try to follow the coach’s model; Its 3D scanning checks the form and gives advice.
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In Nepal, some 30% of people live without electricity. As the general manager of Gham Power, Anjal Niraula focuses on addressing this problem by working with solar microgrids to provide a reliable electricity source to people who need it. So far, the private company has installed 2.5MW of solar microgrids across more than 2,000 projects, helping people to avoid using less environmentally friendly fuels such as diesel and kerosene. Anjal is a member of the World Energy Council’s Future Energy Leaders program.

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Julius Tan is the founder of Electrify, an energy retail marketplace based in Singapore. As the country liberalizes its electricity market, the company allows consumers to compare electricity prices from multiple retailers and purchase directly from them. According to its website, Electrify has facilitated $3.8 million worth of transactions since March 2017, with commercial and industrial customers buying 30Gwh of electricity through the platform. Its next move is a new energy marketplace based on blockchain, which enables peer-to-peer trading from small-scale producers such as residential rooftop solar and wind turbines. The company recently raised $30 million in less than ten days through the sale of electronic currency tokens.

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Thinking Machines is a data science startup established in 2015, designed to make artificial intelligence systems work for humans. Founder Stephanie Sy and her team want to make companies more effective by encouraging them to make data driven decisions. With offices in Manila and San Francisco, clients include corporates, government agencies, NGOs and startups. A notable project has been working with the Philippine government (MMDA) on tackling traffic congestion in Manila, by translating data from a transportation app called Waze.

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Hu's dream since junior high school was to launch a rocket. In May 2011, he led an amateur team of college students in Guangzhou, China, to study rockets, and two years later, his dream came true, launching a space-exploring rocket he made in Inner Mongolia. In 2014, Hu set up China's first non-state space rocket firm, Linkspace, where he serves as its CEO, and is planning his first commercial launch in 2017.

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Suhani Jalota is the founder and CEO of the Myna Mahila Foundation, which provides impoverished women in India with affordable health products such as sanitary napkins. It also helps to create opportunities for young female entrepreneurs. The foundation also has a support function, encouraging women to talk about issues they may be afraid to discuss, removing the shame from discourse on topics such as menstruation, toilets and sanitation. Duke University-educated Jalota won the 2017 Queen's Young Leader Award.

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Tekriwal founded JetSetGo, an India-based private jet concierge service that links passengers to planes through an online marketplace. She defied the odds first by breaking into a male-dominated profession as a woman and again by starting the company in 2013 after a bout with cancer. She went into aviation because of a passion for the profession since age 16. The MBA graduate's firm now has contracts in excess of $6 million and manages assets worth $70 million.

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Modi is the chief executive of Lucideus, an enterprise cybersecurity company that he helped start. The firm based in India has provided electronic risk management services for four years to large companies offshore. Modi also joined an Indian government committee formed in 2014 to set up cybersecurity vocational courses. Multiple universities in Asia count him as a visiting faculty member specialized in information systems and security.
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Miles Wen received his Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering with First Class Honors and minor in Finance from HKU in 2011. He then obtained his PhD degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering under Prof. Victor Li from HKU in 2015.
Dr. Wen is an alumni of Lee Hysan Hall, former resident tutor at New College, former Founding Vice-President of Eta Kappa Nu (Lambda Iota Chapter) at HKU, and former Fulbright scholar at Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, UC Berkeley. He is an expert in power system, information and communication technologies, optimization algorithms, big data, and machine learning. He is the author of over 10 academic papers and the inventor of one patent. In 2015, he co-founded Fano Labs Limited, a high-tech startup backed by HKU, Hong Kong Science & Technology Park, angel investors, and venture capitalists. He is currently the CEO of Fano Labs. Since early 2016, he has been appointed as an Honorary Assistant Professor (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) at HKU.

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Diatce G Harahap known as Ache Harahap graduated from Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. He continued his postgraduate in University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. Ache is the CEO of PT Jualan Online Indonesia as an artificial intelligence company and runs BJTech as their technology’s name. BJTech has two chatbot products, Bang Joni and Cinta. Currently also launched a chatbot platform for SME (Small Medium Enterprises) that focused on Digital Customer Care.

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Ah Moon Marip (known as Ah Moon) is a singer and songwriter from the Kachin State of Myanmar. A former member of Me N Ma Girls, Myanmar's first all-girl pop band, Ah Moon released her first solo album, Min Pay Tae A Chit, in 2014. It sold out in the country within weeks. She's since released another album, Automatic, with plans for another in 2018. She's one of Myanmar's most recognized performers, with over 2.5 million Facebook fans.

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Momina Mustehsan is one of Pakistan's biggest music stars, and fast becoming one of her country's most high profile activists. After singing a duet with famed singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khanthat that went viral, Mustehsan quickly earned an online following in the millions. Mustehsan used her newfound exposure to advocate for social causes important to her, including women's rights, cyberbullying and mental health awareness. She was named one of BBC'S 100 Influential Women for 2017.

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After studying in Paris, pastry chef Talita Setyadi returned to Indonesia in 2013 to open her first bakery, BEAU. Among the classic French favorites, Setyadi offers twists in her entremets, or multi-layered mousse-based cakes (raspberry, yogurt and pistachio is a signature combo). The bakery provides goods -- all made with natural, local ingredients -- to about 100 cafes, restaurants and hotels in Jakarta, and took in close to $1 million in revenue in 2017. Setyadi has also made education a pillar of BEAU; nearly all its bakers are trained from scratch, starting as cleaners or stewards at the company. The 29-year-old served as the youngest and only female judge in The World Pastry Cup in 2017.

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As an 11-year-old, Miko Apsiras had his first ever encounter with the culinary world when he was helping his aunt out in the kitchen. At the time, baking not only warmed up his pastry in the oven, but also ignited the sparks within the heart of this baking enthusiast. Having attended a Culinary Arts course at the College of St. Benilde, now, the then baking newbie has become an experienced pastry chef, who has worked in various hotels such as the Shangri-La in Manila, Resorts World in Manila, Raffles and Fairmont in Makati and Magnum Café in Malia, Malaysia and Brunei. According to livetoexplore.ph, so far, Aspiras has won 6 gold medals, 3 silvers, and 2 bronze medals in culinary competitions such as the local Philippine Culinary Cup, the Hong Kong Culinary Classics and the World Association of Chef Societies.

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At 29, Thai-Austrian Pichaya Utharntharm (better known as Chef Pam) has already picked up a degree from the Culinary Institute of America and worked directly under Jean-Georges Vongerichten at his eponymous three Michelin star restaurant. She has since launched two culinary businesses of her own. One is a barbecue delivery service, which offers Wagyu brisket, pork belly and other meats slow smoked over local hardwoods like lychee and tamarind. The other is her own restaurant, The Table by Chef Pam. Utharntharm is also a judge on Thailand’s edition of “Top Chef” and hosts her own cooking show, making her one of the country’s most recognized chefs.