Women to Watch 2022: Carbo Yu, Sinclair

Carbo Yu

Regional director
Sinclair
Hong Kong

After earning a degree in communications, Carbo Yu started her career working at boutique agencies where she gained a solid understanding of both client strategy and the ‘business of agency’.

Within five years she had joined a global firm as practice lead, and eventually joined Sinclair in 2017 as a director. Having successfully expanded and transformed the agency’s business operations by implementing capacity planning and robust processes to streamline operations, Yu was promoted to regional director in 2020, reaching a senior management position in just 10 years of agency experience.

Today, aged just 33, Yu leads growth initiatives and client satisfaction for Sinclair across APAC, managing a team of 50 colleagues across four hubs in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore.

In the last few years, Yu has led diversification across sector, category and market, providing a safeguard in a highly volatile and unpredictable business landscape.

In the first half of 2022 amid multiple Covid lockdowns in Shanghai and Beijing, Yu led the client leadership team across the four hubs to focus on key client retention, which resulted in high retention rates across the agency’s key portfolio in B2B and B2C business. Part of the strategy was to offer expanded remits in SEO, content strategy,  research and insights, and creative services—this has accounted for healthy revenues in 2022 so far.

Even more impressively, Yu has always achieved steady year-on-year revenue growth. In just the first half of 2022 alone, and even with ongoing pandemic restrictions across the region, Yu led multiple new clients wins regionally, generating sizeable revenues, as well as diversifying the client revenue base across multiple growing industry verticals, including health and wellness, finance and investment, technology, and corporate services.

Yu is a strong supporter of ‘PR for good’ and regularly works with corporations and NGOs on meaningful campaigns that drive behavioural change. She has been invited by The Hong Kong Management Association (HKMA) to provide communications training to over 80 NGOs. 

As a mentor, Yu is committed to providing opportunities and guidance to the next generation and fostering local talent. She currently serves on the board of PRHK and was elected chairperson in 2022, championing talent and promoting best practices across the industry. She is a mentor in Prospect’s Global Mentorship Scheme and actively supports a number of career and education initiatives organised by local universities and trade organisations, such as guest-lecturing at the Integrated Marketing Communication class of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and hosting career talks for HKMA’s Youth Development Scheme.