40 under 40: Meet 2017's class of APAC marketing-communications achievers

Aki Mizutani | Editor and director | Cutters Studios Tokyo | Japan: Aki Mizutani and Cutters are long-term devotees of each other. As an intern at the company’s LA branch she made ends meet working in a Japanese restaurant, where she could often be found juggling plates of food with complex post-production work. Graduating to assistant editor after many years working on short films in both a personal and professional capacity, Mizutani directed her skills to campaigns for the likes of Toyota and AT&T and films (including Academy Award-nominated The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom) before moving to Tokyo to establish Cutters in Japan. A true artist who believes that good communication and a healthy dose of fun are crucial to getting the most out of her team, Mizutani and Cutters are credited with producing “influential and groundbreaking” work that “always goes beyond normal approaches”, according to Jon King, ECD at Publicis One Japan. A recent example is the phenomenally successful ‘Change Destiny’ multi-media campaign for SK-II, which Mizutani helped to develop, direct and edit.

Paul John Peña | Chief experience officer | Dentsu Jayme Syfu | Philippines: Paul John Peña graduated from the University of Asia and the Pacific with his eye on the prize – to climb to the C-suite by the age of 30. Turns out he underestimated himself; at merely 28 he rose up the ranks to become Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide Philippines' first chief digital officer (CDO) in 2011. The role eventually earned him accolades as one of the ten most influential CDOs in the world. This year, the extroverted marketer was installed as chief experience officer at Dentsu Jayme Syfu. Powered by his astute foresight and collaborative spirit, Peña’s business unit matched 2016’s full year revenue within just three quarters of 2017. A mentor to many, Peña’s strengths lie in breaking down complex problems into actionable frameworks for his team to work on. “Pao has the passion for getting the most difficult things done, consistently demonstrating an exemplary can-do attitude and a relentless drive to overcome challenges,” says Marco Bos, VP of sales and marketing Asia at PMI.

Rebecca Tos | CEO | Columbus agency | ANZ: Business transformation is the name of Rebecca Tos’s game. From turning around the fortunes of a Sydney restaurant to fast-tracking the Reprise Media agency towards profitability and mass expansion during her time as general manger, Tos is a tireless worker whose cross-sector experience makes her an invaluable asset. Leading Columbus since 2012, she has achieved record growth YOY, doubled staff size and remodelled the agency into Australia’s leading data-driven marketing agency. Recent achievements have also seen Columbus push into new cities and countries in the region and shore up a healthy business pipeline. As the first female CEO on Dentsu’s executive leadership team, Tos also strives to lead the way for women in work, championing the establishment of breast feeding rooms in the office and encouraging her many mentees—both within media and outside it—to adopt her personal mantra: “It's not about being the smartest person in the room with all the answers, it's about being the person in the room that people want to follow.”

Yiorgos Hadjiandrea | Head of media buying solutions, Southeast Asia (DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360) | Google | Singapore: Yiorgos Hadjiandrea moved to Singapore from London in 2015, maintaining both his firm grasp on programmatic despite the cultural shift and, as one admirer points out, enviably great hair despite the humidity. Armed with over 14 years of solid track record in digital media work, he has embraced a new role as head of DoubleClick’s bid manager in Southeast Asia—a move driven by his passion to digitise emerging markets. In just over two years in the country, Hadjiandrea has grown DoubleClick’s revenue, scaled its Singapore operation and launched market teams across Southeast Asia. Promoted to head of media buying solutions this year, his penchant for empowering staff earned him a 97 percent favourability score in his latest Manager Feedback Survey. As Google’s go-to representative, presenter and panelist across various ad tech committees and conferences in Southeast Asia, Hadjiandrea stays on course to uplift the programmatic industry. He has also helped launch Digitize in Singapore, the first partnership of its kind between DoubleClick and the Singaporean Economic Development Board to spur digitisation in Asia.

Murtaza A. Tajbhoy | Chief strategy officer | Leo Burnett | Sri Lanka: There is something of a paradox about Murtaza A. Tajbhoy. This “inherently curious” CSO thrives on new experiences and insights—playing the flute, acting and baking are among his diverse interests—yet he has dedicated the 17 years of his professional career entirely to one organism: Leo Burnett. This loyalty is testatment both to his passion for the agency and for his belief in what he can achieve in its Sri Lanka bureau. Notching up a wealth of succesful and widely-recognised brand campaigns over the years, including “Pass it on when you’re done with it” for the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society, he was this year named one of the International Advertising Association’s Inspire Champions. Inspire is what he continues to do, pushing the agenda on consumer research in order to better understand the country’s population segments; managing intern masterclasses and mentoring university students; and becoming a strategic asset to brands from Mobitel to Nestlé. The assistant VP of food at Nestlé, Priyadarshinie Karunaratne, says: “Murtaza has helped formulate our brand essence, thanks to the knowledge of Sri Lankan people that he has at his fingertips.

Yan Lee | Chief product officer | iClick Interactive Asia | China: Prior to joining iClick in 2015, Yan Lee was the founder and CEO of Buzzinate, a Big Data service provider established in 2009 that has risen to become one of China’s leading DSPs, leveraging over 45 billion user signals every month. Lee brought his entrepreneurial spirit with him when he transferred to iClick and is constantly looking for new ways to innovate within the digital world and deliver a better outcome for end users. Equipped with a range of experience that allows him to thoroughly understand clients’ needs, Lee is adept at turning complex programmatic marketing options into a toolbox from which advertisers can pick and choose solutions to become more effective in the digital world. Under his command, iClick has not only added clients from Huawei to Cartier to their roster, but has launched several groundbreaking products including a mobile native video platform, MoTV, serving native video ads; and iAccess, a one-stop, cross-channel targeting solution specifically for Chinese agencies and brands.

Yuliani Setiadi | General manager, head of Social@Ogilvy | Ogilvy Indonesia: This formerly Amsterdam-based radio presenter hasn’t looked back since buying a one-way ticket to her native Indonesia in 2012 and dedicating her significant communication talents to the fledgling Social@Ogilvy. Her presenter’s passion for telling stories remains, however: whether it is data that needs distilling or business problems that need solving, Yuliani Setiadi is adept at seeking out uncommon solutions and packaging them with flair. Developing a ‘social newsroom’ approach to social media, in which brands can optimize and analyse posts in real time, is one example of this: Setiadi has deployed it to great effect with brands as varied as Coca-Cola and the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism. She is also the youngest member of Ogilvy Indonesia’s executive committee, charged with shaping the agency’s future, and is thus hugely committed to Ogilvy’s training progamme for young people.

Scott Coldham | Managing director | Colenso BBDO | New Zealand: Scott Coldham’s ambitions to run Colenso BBDO began brewing at 26, when he stepped through the door as product manager at IAG Insurance. It was the start of an entirely mutual love affair: Coldham switched to the agency and within a year had been marked as a future leader by former CEO Nick Garrett. “Scott became the benchmark for what I saw as the modern account person, highly strategic, strong business smarts, very keen eye creatively and with some real mongrel spirit,” Garrett says. A decade of hard work and a series of swift promotions later, Coldham declares himself still “feverishly passionate” about what Colenso stands for, an infectious outlook that has translated directly into record revenue and profit growth last year plus a stunning suite of great work and awards: 2016 and 2017 were record years for Colenso at Cannes. Coldham’s commitment to healthy working practices must also be lauded: the entire team has received unconscious bias training and time-management coaching, to try to tackle work-life imbalance, is also available to all.

Dr Harshit Jain | Senior vice president, country manager (India) and marketing director (Asia-Pacific) | McCann Health | India: Few are as equipped to understand the challenges of the healthcare industry as Dr Harshit Jain. A certified medical professional, Jain was also an MBA graduate and partnered with two health startups before joining McCann in 2013. He has spent the past four years trebling McCann Health’s client list and bolstering its status as one of the network’s most successful arms, even while many other healthcare agencies in the country are in steady decline. Jain’s team of healthcare marketing specialists—“change agents”, in his eyes—now manage six out of 10 of the most significant healthcare brands in the country and have won over 40 awards in the last year, including an oustanding 13 Cannes Lions for their Immunity Charm campaign for the Ministry of Public Health Afghanistan. This campaign epitomises the kind of work Jain seeks to create: work that, quite simply, improves people’s lives. He is also passionate about helping people express their health problems, last year launching the world’s first “health emojis”, to this end.

Thapas Joseph | President, digital | Fountainhead MKTG | India: At 30, Thapas Joseph is the youngest of three Fountainhead MKTG presidents. Yet he began playing the moves that would lead him to this position some eight years ago when he founded Redigital shortly after leaving college, filling a gap he spotted for a digital agency with technology expertise. Redigital became part of Fountainhead MKTG in 2012, kickstarting an impressive period of growth in team size and profits. Joseph has been key to all this. A “consummate salesman”, he believes in a upholding the now threatened tradition of facetime with clients, and his brief discussions are described as “highly immersive.” The Japanese term ‘nemawashi’, meaning the process of laying foundations for a project by gathering support from all parties concerned, is at the heart of Joseph’s working style. The high point of the past year? Joseph’s ‘resurrection’ of Aditya Birla, founder of the multinational conglomerate, to deliver key business messages to a conference 20 years on from his death, in what is described as “one of the most technologically advanced holographic resurrections in the world.”

Aaron Crowther | Managing director | Magnum & Co | Australia: “A privilege” is how Aaron Crowther sees his distinctly diverse 17-year career, which incorporates time spent in journalism, client-side and agency-side across B2B, B2C and government sectors. Since joining Magnum & Co last year, Crowther has deployed this experience to help the agency win Campaign’s 2017 ‘Boutique PR Consultancy of the Year’ award as well as a host of others, topping a solid 12 months of growth in both profits and staff numbers and accelerating the transition of the agency from “traditional PR” to a more integrated model. His efforts have “exceeded expectations”, according to Magnum’s managing partner. Crowther also takes an active interest in the wider marketing community, sharing his views on mentoring and purposeful communications through a blog partnership with Firebrand and regularly speaking at industry events. “As a boss and mentor, he is inspiring, energetic, strategic, empathetic and driven, with a level of emotional intelligence that is so crucial, yet rare to find in a business leader,” said Magnum’s former head of planning, Charlotte Ferrand.

Robin Wong | CEO | Mindshare FAST Asia-Pacific| Singapore: Robin Wong was on the fast track to a bright career in accountancy – the award-winning Nanyang Technological University graduate was valedictorian of his cohort – when data and analytics courted his interest. Upon graduation, he dived into algorithms at Accenture for two years before boarding Mindshare’s analytics unit in 2005. His foresight in converging marketing analytics with digital talents has propelled him to his current role as CEO of Mindshare's Future Adaptive Specialist Team (FAST) in the region. Described as the ‘People’s CEO’ for his warm demeanor, Wong’s leadership has seen the regional FAST hub expand in both business wins and headcounts and in 2016, the programmatic arm won Bronze in Campaign’s Asia Pacific Programmatic Agency of the Year award. Wong’s ability to demystify complex technicalities into bite-sized concepts also feeds media data capacity in Singapore – he is a regular volunteer trainer on advanced analytics topics for the IAB Singapore's Measurement, Standards and Data committee.

Lynda Talintyre | Senior marketing manager, ANZ | Zendesk | Australia: A decade and a half in the tech industry has taught Lynda Talintyre that one’s marketing game is only as strong as the ties one builds. Her superior, Henrik Peterson, lauds her for being a critical factor in “growing our APAC business by 35 percent over the past 12 months”: such success is buttressed by the relationships Talintyre has forged not only with the sales team, but also with agency partners and suppliers. With their backing, the local face of Zendesk has developed and managed the firm’s various events, including a Relate event in Sydney that saw the attendance of 350 people, 199 leads generated and 25 deals sealed. Talintyre is not keen for her role as a female decision-maker in the tech arena to remain a rare breed and earlier this year she organised a ‘Women in Leadership’ event with around 100 female attendees, to deepen discourse on how companies can drive gender diversity.

Gopa Kumar | Executive vice president | Isobar | India: A digital evangelist since the mid-noughties, Gopa Kumar was Isobar Gurgaon’s first employee in 2009. In the ensuing years this “honest and true” leader has worked his way up a ladder strewn with award-winning campaigns to become executive VP role this year, where he leads a team of 150 and is tasked with charting the next wave of growth for the agency in India. Kumar also heads Isobar’s social and analytics arm, ensuring that social thinking is embedded within all content, utilities and design, and is a great believer in technology that can add true human value. This year alone, Kumar has overseen 120 percent growth in organic revenue, 150 percent growth in billings and the win of allegedly one of the most competitive pitches in recent times, Maruti Suzuki, for whom Kumar is helping create APAC’s first AI video platform chatbot. “He has a superb grasp of marketing principles and he uses them to the best of his abilities to bring out the best out of any campaign/client goal,” says Sanchit Sanga, Mindshare’s chief digital officer for APAC.

Jona Oboza | Head of programmatic | Omnicom Media Group Programmatic | Philippines: Peers refer to Jona Oboza’s work as ‘programmagic’. Her track record is indeed spellbinding. Oboza has thrice been the youngest millennial to sit at executive committee tables. After warming her seat as programmatic lead at Omnicom Media Group for just a year, the laser-focused chief grew the business 20 fold and maintained a momentum of 177 percent year-on-year revenue growth. Within this period, the programmatic evangelist has managed to part the male-dominated ad tech sea to lead 50 local and regional pitches including McDonald's, Friesland Campina, Century Pacific, San Miguel Corporation and Filinvest. Oboza is backed by a fully local team that she’s been expanding: cultivating programmatic talents in the Philippines is her passion, after all. “Talent and business acumen can be developed, but what sets Jona apart is her blazing enthusiasm in sharing knowledge and expertise. I truly found a gold-mine in her,” says Mary Buenaventura, president CEO of Omnicom Media Group Philippines.

Bryan Tilson | Managing director | Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai | China: Appointed managing director at the age of 33, Bryan Tilson is the youngest ever to take up such a role among all Wieden + Kennedy offices. His youth, however, has not hampered him from keeping the agency on track to hit its best financial year in China yet. Business results, to Tilson, are spurred by breakthrough creativity – a conviction that drove his team’s iconic Nike campaign, “Find Your Greatness”, during the 2012 Olympics, which helped the agency bag two Cannes Lions and Campaign’s Greater China Independent Agency of the Year award. Tilson has also spearheaded two programmes under Wieden + Kennedy to help fertilise creativity in China in the last 12 months, the first being The Kennedys, a nine-month programme that instills inventiveness through hands-on experience. The agency hired three graduates from the programme this year. The second is WKLY, an editorial platform to discover and support the creative community through published articles, pop-up events and collaborations.

Maiya Wiester | Art director | Ogilvy & Mather | Japan: A Japanese-American who grew up in both countries, Maiya Wiester is a believer in the power of unexpected mixes. Her cross-cultural experience drives her to marry the forces of East and West in her projects while seamlessly connecting with global and local clients – feats that earned her over 50 awards by the relatively tender age of 26. The graphic design graduate crossed the globe from San Francisco to join Ogilvy & Mather in Tokyo during the agency’s period of fast transition. Yet Wiester kept her footing, displaying both tenacious professionalism to rival that of Japanese craftsmen and the poised individualism of the West. Besides handling the agency’s biggest brands, like Ilohas from Coca-Cola Japan and American Express, Wiester also worked on a celebrated campaign for Refugees International Japan (RIJ) that saw the personal belongings of refugees sold in bespoke packaging, thus raising awareness and funds for the global crisis. Jane Best, the CEO of RIJ, was impressed that Wiester “took [the campaign] on as a personal challenge and created a display that is professional, eye-catching and informative.”

Boson Yang | Deputy general manager | iProspect | China: For many marketers, search engine optimisation (SEO) is a yawn. But Boson Yang’s 12-year voyage on the SEO seas is powered by passion. Yang spent his past decade servicing domestic and international clients including Philips, Schneider Electric, L'Oreal, Dow Jones and China Mobile. Under his leadership, iProspect China has had a good run this year – not only did it cinch the Chevron account, it also became the first agency in the country to launch an SEO Academy to cultivate digital marketing talents. “I really appreciate [Yang’s] rich experience in SEO, creative thinking and humorous management style, which already helped iProspect China win applause within Dentsu Aegis Network,” praises his CEO, Tony Chen. Understanding that passion in SEO cannot be forced, Yang tries to spark it with creativity. Other than his dramatic delivery in the free courses he offers to college students, the multi-talented marketer presents his knowledge in the form of catchy freestyle songs, earning him the moniker Teacher Bao (‘Bao’ is a slang word for ‘immense popularity’ in China).

Sherryl Goce | Business unit director | IdeasXMachina Advertising (IXM) | Philippines: When IXM got on the digital bandwagon, Sherryl Goce was in the driver’s seat. By initiating digital learning sessions within the advertising agency and bringing in digital content talents, the new business unit director has been instrumental in netting lucrative accounts, such as Alaska Milk Corporation, The Generics Pharmacy (TGP) and United Laboratories’ (Unilab) organic food supplement brand, Sekaya. Goce, after all, has long been leading digital adoption in her previous employments. When working as product and CRM officer at RiteMed under Unilab, Goce gained 53 million organic impressions for the brand by spearheading an online campaign – an uncharted platform for pharmaceutical brands in the Philippines. Known as ‘Ms Congeniality’ in the office, Goce is both a charming leader and a generous mentor to her subordinates. Her passion in developing talents extends to underprivileged children – those aged eight to 14 are given opportunities to hone artistic interests, including painting, origami and even learning Photoshop, through her Silid Sining advocacy programme.

Aaron Boekestein | Head of agency business, Asia-Pacific | Google | Singapore: Aaron Boekestein is known for getting stuff done, with bullet-train pace. He is even better known for gathering everyone on board before pulling away from the station. From launching Volkswagen Group Australia’s maiden digital campaign in 2004 to leading regional media business for technology giants like HP and HTC, Boekestein synchronises his teams’ directions with a focus on inclusivity. In fact, he is so adamant about not leaving anyone behind that he founded StandingOUT, a support community to address critical issues that LGBT professionals face in tech and media, in partnership with Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Singapore. The international diversity ambassador for Google walks the inclusion talk by raising funds for LGBT charities and has launched community outreach to over 70 small-medium businesses, earning him the company’s Diversity Impact Award. Besides being a diversity advocate, Boekestein has co-chaired the IAB Measurement, Data and Standards Committee across Southeast Asia.

Paul Anthony Larmon | Managing director | Echo Myanmar: Since founding Echo Myanmar three years ago, Paul Anthony Larmon has not drawn a salary. This is not because business is peaky – in fact, revenue for the PR consultancy swelled over 700 percent from 2015 to 2017, thanks to retainers won from Coca-Cola, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, FrieslandCampina, Volkswagen and more. It is just that this 28-year-old – who was named ‘Young PR Professional of the Year (Agency)’ in Campaign’s PR Awards Asia 2017 – prefers to maximise spending in hiring the best talents. His investment has grown Echo from a team of two to 34 with the lowest turnover of any local agency over 10 people. Armed with years of experience at global firms Edelman and FleishmanHillard, Larmon moved to Myanmar in 2013 with the aim to cultivate the country’s first generation of PR professionals since the easing of press censorship. When not pursuing this goal, he teaches at a local private academy and has donated media relations services to charities like World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Irrawaddy Literary Festival.

David Haddad | Managing director | IPG Mediabrands | Singapore: From his performance, you’d never know that David Haddad was a new kid on the block in Singapore. Haddad relocated in 2016 from Sydney, where he has spent 15 years building his career, to take on the role of managing director for IPG Mediabrands. Within the year, business has soared 20 percent, propelled in part by the entrance of new high-profile clients like Maybank and Toastbox. The firm is also enjoying a renaissance of client and staff retention – it recorded a 50 percent year-on-year improvement on staff retention. Haddad is clearly the kind of boss that inspires devotion. Those who nominated him praise the way he addresses anonymous staff feedback immediately and is overturning the industry status quo of staying late at work by introducing work-life balance initiatives. Outside the office, he furthers his cause of uplifting talent and creativity as an active member of the Association of Accredited Advertising Agents Singapore (4As).

Rika Sharma | Managing partner, group head of Social@Ogilvy; regional director, digital, APAC | Social@Ogilvy Singapore: It is hard to pinpoint exactly which element is responsible for making Rika Sharma one of the biggest rainmakers among 350 employees at Ogilvy Singapore. Her razor-sharp intellect could be a factor; she finished high school in Canada at 16 and earned a full scholarship to university. It could also be the business and branding acumen honed from establishing her own marketing firm, Consult Rika, at the age of 25. Or it may be that she fortifies her successes by helping others build theirs. A sought-after thought leader, Sharma generously mentors and trains cadets in the industry. As Scott Kronick, president and CEO of Social@Ogilvy Asia Pacific puts it: "In the world of marketing disruption, Rika is one of the people to turn to for answers.” Sharma’s ability to deliver real-time insights and content to brands certainly contributes to her reeling in the big fish, including HSBC, Hilton and Electrolux. As such, she raked in record-high billing of US$3.7 million in 2016 for the agency.

Laura Aldington | CEO | Host/Havas | Australia: Laura Aldington is the type of climber who lifts others with her. As one of the few female CEOs in the industry, she readily mentors women, including for The Communications Council and Public Relations Council (PRC). A combination of factors make Aldington an ideal role model: she ascended from account executive at TBWA London to CEO of Host Australia within a decade and in between has run the flagship accounts of Publicis in Sydney as the firm’s youngest group account director, bagging multiple awards. With Aldington at the helm, half of Host’s female staff report directly to the c-suite. More than half of the agency’s creative department, typically a testosterone-dominated part of the office, are also women. Revenue is up by 20 percent; client retention is at an all-time high; and staff turnover is capped at a low 15 percent per annum – loyalty, after all, is the reward of a leader who does not hesitate to get deep in the trenches with her troops.

Rakesh Menon | Senior creative director | FCB Interface Communications | India: Rakesh Menon can do more with five seconds than others can with five minutes. Understanding that most YouTube viewers skip ads, Menon created a digital film for Nivea Body Deodorizer that made the most of the initial un-skippable five seconds to communicate the brand message while keeping the audience glued. Not only did the video generate 7 million views within days, YouTube presented the campaign as a case study in industry seminars to transform thinking about digital ads. With over 40 television commercials already under his belt, the senior creative director for FCB Interface has also worked on brands like Oreo and Mahindra & Mahindra, picking up eight promotions in his first seven years with the agency along the way. Robby Matthew, FCB’s chief creative officer, lauds Menon for “an instinctive understanding of consumer psychology and marketing strategy”, which he apparently displayed from his earliest days as a trainee.

Scott Player | CEO | APD | Australia: An entrepreneur at heart, Scott Player has co-founded three commercially successful businesses – a digital agency, a coffee-ordering and loyalty app and a mobile ordering system for the food and beverage industry. But Player has not let this entrepreneurial streak derail his duties as a CEO, a role to which he has been appointed twice in an 18-year career. As CEO of APD, which he joined in June, Player leads over 100 staff to deliver digital marketing solutions to clients including Lend Lease, Harvey Norman, Goodyear, Dell and Ford. The company’s executive chairman, Roger Sharp, says that the firm handpicked him to take the helm when a number of competitors, customers and employers “unfailingly recommended Scott in the highest of terms.” Player’s previous role as CEO of Ansible also saw the agency’s revenue and profit balloon by 25 and 67 percent respectively. Just last year, he led Ansible to partner with Google and research agency YouGov in launching a global study on brands’ mobile presence and performance, while setting up the ‘Ansible Academy’ to train clients and staff on technological and mobile innovation.

Stan Lim | Executive creative director | Isobar Singapore: Stan Lim reaches for the skies, and he takes others along the ride. Working as an under-appreciated creative in the early days of his career, Lim vowed to never succumb to limitations. He joined The Upper Storey (TUS) in 2005 and helped grow the agency from producing CD-ROMs to providing digital creative solutions across Asia Pacific. TUS was eventually acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network and became Isobar Singapore today. These days, Lim is giving another industry a leg up from his catbird seat – tech startups. The regional creative director believes that nothing pushes marketing boundaries like creative technologies. For example, Lim applied spatial computing technology to create a mixed-reality car showroom, which was rolled out across 110 General Motors dealerships in South Korea this year. The spatial computing partner for the project was able to deploy their technology at scale and refine its performance. In another project with Johnnie Walker, Lim’s high bar for creativity pushed the technology partner to develop two new IPs, thus improving their offering of mobile holographic screens.

Ana Ysabel Ongpin | Managing director for public relations | Campaigns and Grey | Philippines: A theatre arts graduate, Ana Ysabel Ongpin commands a different stage these days – public relations. Ongpin has demonstrated sharp calibre in bridging brand and public, whether driving campaigns for industry behemoths or maneuvering communication for an organisation combatting litigation. Even a seven-year hiatus could not blunt her edge. Returning to the industry last year from full-time motherhood, Ongpin has continued her streak of excellence at Campaigns and Grey. Her move to reinvent public relations as a fully integrated business pipeline, not just an alternative revenue stream, has struck gold. The multinational accounts she has bagged in less than a year now make up almost half of the shop's PR business. Against a backdrop of shrinking budgets and intensified competition, Ongpin's leadership netted the Golden World Award for Excellence in the "PR on the Shoestring Budget" category, the agency's first international recognition. Outside of work, Ongpin advocates breastfeeding through L.A.T.C.H., a non-profit organisation she co-founded during her seven ‘full-time-mum’ years.

Aimee Buchanan | CEO | OMD Australia: Aimee Buchanan believes that nothing should get in the way of talented individuals' climb to the top - not even motherhood. She should know; the new mother leads 550 employees and drives billings of over $1.4 billion as the CEO of OMD Australia. Balance, to her, is key. To help reconcile childcare and career for all, Buchanan has kicked off initiatives that support parents, including flexible work arrangements and 16-weeks paid leave as well as mentorship and coaching for parents returning to work. Her efforts have already delivered yields - female turnover rate at OMD has been slashed by nearly 40 percent. On top of that, women make up the majority (60 percent) of the staff base and half of the executive team. They are returning to work at a rate of 89 percent, far more than the previous 25 percent. It also seems that they are here to stay - after all, OMD has won numerous top employer awards since Buchanan took over the reins.

Vishal Dembla | Vice president and general manager of Southeast Asia | Turner | Singapore: Vishal Dembla may be the youngest member of the senior management team in Turner, but beneath the boyish grin is a decade of experience in managing pay-TV and motion-picture companies. With his eyes trained on the shift in content consumption trends, Dembla struck high-level partnerships to weather the disruption – a spot-on strategy that earned him five promotions at Turner within the last seven years. Along the way, he cuts progressive deals, driving, for example, marketing initiatives like Cartoon Network's Code the Future, a regional programme that teaches coding fundamentals to kids. The energetic head also pushed for Turner’s content to be accessible on non-traditional channels, thus tapping new digital audiences. This includes driving development for mobile platforms and inking syndication deals of both original and acquired content on pan-regional OTT services, as well as through Cartoon Network apps launched on telco platforms. Currently, Dembla continues to mine communication and advertising solutions to stay ahead of the evolving audience. The show, after all, must go on.

Anna Stoyanova | Head of product | Essence | Australia: Promoted four times since she joined Essence in January 2014, Anna Stoyanova now heads a team of top talent responsible for designing the company’s product proposition for clients. Highly respected by both staff and clients for her understanding of and ability to explain complex digital concepts, Stoyanova is also hailed as a skilled manager and “cheerleader” for those she works with: she mentors over 20 people at Essence, across three continents. The last year has seen particularly gratifying results for Stoyanova with the establishment of a new Sydney office that was able to hit the ground running with three campaigns; the APAC-wide adoption of Essence’s proprietary software, Olive, which involved training 150 people in four different countries, and the running of multiple digital workshops with clients. Amid all this Stoyanova never stops pushing towards her own overarching goal: a clean and transparent ecosystem in which all industry players can work together to create more valuable work. Judging by the endorsements of those who know her—“She makes stuff happen, even in the most challenging of circumstances” says Veli Aghdiran, regional director (APAC), talent development and culture—she will achieve this goal, too.

Neha Mehrotra | Regional head, north | Avian Media | India: From the day Neha Mehrotra joined the fledgling PR start-up Avian Media 13 years ago, she has dedicated all her efforts to its growth. Initially responsible for helping lay the company’s groundwork systems and handling early clients, she has now graduated to running Avian’s multi-million-dollar business in the north of the country, where 40 percent of the business is based. The last 12 months have seen Mehrotra achieve some remarkable results, both on a company level—she has grown Avian’s reach in the north by 70 percent, winning assignments with Deloitte, Facebook and Mastercard—and a personal level. Mehrotra was the only Indian to be shortlisted for PR Week Asia's PR professional of the Year Award, thanks to her efforts to redefine PR’s place in the industry. Mehrotra also heads the Indian chapter of ‘Women in PR’, which aims to improve gender balance at the c-suite level and advise the next generation of female leaders, and has established SEED, a year-long training programme for new recruits.

Tom Simpson | General manager, Australia and head of programmatic and growth, APAC | AdColony | Australia: Hits on Tom Simpson’s impressive career record prior to joining AdColony in 2014 include launching the UK’s first programmatic trading desks at Havas Media Group in London and raising a six figure sum to found MediaQuark, a programmatic data platform with AI capabilities built specifically for Southeast Asia. Now valued as a key player for programmatic in the region—“a flag bearer in evangelising and endorsing a space which is largely misunderstood”, as Mindshare CDO Sanchit Sanga puts it—Simpson continues to excel in his current role at AdColony, travelling the continent in his pursuit of the next big thing in programmatic and mobile. Some of his recent milestones include launching the interactive video platform Aurora in the region and boosting programmatic revenue more than 30 times in just 12 months, propelling AdColony to become the most decorated mobile platform in APAC with a total of 31 awards.

Luke Speers | HR director | Dentsu Aegis Network | ANZ: On the one hand a highly commercial, data-driven HR practitioner, Luke Speers also stands apart from his peers by taking the non-traditional approach of focusing on the strengths of the organisation he is working for, rather than any shortcomings. A steadfast believer that diversity is critical to industry advancement, Speers has, since joining DAN from iSelect last year, established a diversity and inclusion council that has already acted to improve DAN’s parental leave policy and increase leave for both primary and secondary carers. Speers has also executed a “meticulously planned” restructure of his team around ‘HR centres of excellence’, each with individual targets, in order to better support DAN’s overall business requirements. “Luke and the ANZ team have risen to my challenge in setting some gold class standards on what good HR partnering looks like," comments Kinch Ong, regional HR director, DAN APAC.

Nina Kao | Marketing, communications and citizenship executive | IBM | Taiwan: Jumping from software marketing manager to marketing executive at IBM in less than 10 years, Nina Kao is now the youngest person ever to hold this role in Taiwan. A sharp strategist, Kao is credited with improving IBM’s relationships with clients by adopting a ‘business-to-human’ approach to B2B communications and excels at translating intricate technology into intriguing stories that relate to real pain points. This year alone, Kao has helped IBM win five awards including three for CSR. When her team started a partnership with the Taiwan Centre of Disease Control to help fight dengue fever in late 2016, Kao worked hard to ensure the operation worked at maximum efficiency, using advanced analytics models to predict outcomes and partnering with other affected countries. Colleagues describe her as a transparent and respectful boss who puts her team’s development on a pedestal, pushing them to get out of their comfort zones and aim for greater achievements. “If she changes her job, I will too!” says one brand and communications manager she works with.

Jeffrey James Saez | Chairman and president | NuWorks Interactive Labs | Philippines: Jeffrey James Saez has worked “relentlessly” in the last eight years to build NuWorks from a small underdog into the Philippines’ biggest independent digital agency and the holder of multiple awards. As the agency’s “chief visionary, chief client consultant and chief ambassador”, Saez has taken a strategic leadership role in key account wins and secured 100 percent client retention; has expanded the agency’s organisational structure and made important hires from other leading agencies; and has been a primary moving force in the launch of innovative tech solutions for clients. A notable recent example of the latter is DeepDive, a part-EEG, part-interview process used to measure consumer emotions, which is already being deployed by Unilever. Saez is also an active participant in the broader digital and tech community in the Philippines, often sharing his thoughts with clients and different industry bodies and encouraging his employees to do the same.

Jason King | General manager | BBDO Hong Kong: Named a “defining hire” by BBDO Greater China CMO Hans Lopez-Vito, Jason King has spent nine years with the agency, thriving in each of four different markets and roles. Becoming head of the Hong Kong office (and BBDO’s youngest general manager in Asia) in 2015, King has overseen the strongest expansion in the company's 42-year history and a record reported profit margin. But he also keeps at least one eye on wider industry transformation at all times, particularly where it concerns young people. A member of the HK4As executive committee, he has mentored many rising stars across the agency’s Greater China network and recently implemented a policy whereby all feedback at meetings starts with the most junior member of the team. King is also a “fervent supporter” of BBDO’s project to provide creative support to startups, working with local retailers TeaCha and iTattoo in Hong Kong.

Angie Wong | Managing director | Leo Burnett Shanghai | China: Angie Wong joined Leo Burnett Hong Kong in 2002 as a brand executive. The ensuing 15 years have seen this “tenacious leader”, as she is described by Michael Lee, CEO of Publicis Communications Greater China, achieve remarkable success at different agencies, culminating in her promotion first to general manager of Leo Burnett Shanghai in 2014 (becoming the youngest female GM in China in the company’s 80-year-history), and then to managing director. Equipped with a psychology degree, Wong always brings the human approach to her work, recently introducing a new ‘detective toolkit’ to enable her team to record consumer behaviour more closely during market visits. Her passion for people has also led to the introduction of a speaker series called Think Big: as a result of this and other initiatives, staff engagement is at a five-year high. Praised by one client as someone “never afraid to speak up”, Wong is currently transforming her agency to better serve clients’ needs by restructuring a clunky account service and implementing a ‘hybrid-only’ hiring policy to ensure a more integrated work output.

Gaurav Lalwani | General manager and regional business director | JWT | Singapore: Gaurav Lalwani’s career got off to a sparkling start at the age of 18, when he became Y&R’s youngest account executive. Continuing to notch up ‘youngest’ positions, Lalwani worked at Lowe and Leo Burnett before joining JWT Singapore, where he took up the general manager reins earlier this year and has so far achieved a succession of business wins that have propelled the agency up R3’s New Business League charts. His firm belief that ideas built around social good can change the world is evident in his work record, which includes SK-II’s award-winning ‘Change Destiny’ campaign, as well as his role as a startup advisor and student mentor and his reputation as a champion of thought diversity in the office. In Lalwani’s mind, the world will truly change when ‘creative people’ and ‘tech people’ join forces, a philosophy he tested recently during a project for Samsung by encouraging data scientists and planners to build campaign strategy, and creatives and digital technologists to execute it. “He has a fantastic blend of strategic thinking and creativity that allows great work to be born,” says Rick Ely, senior marketing director at Johnson & Johnson.

Rajiv Dingra | Founder and CEO | WATConsult | India: Rajiv Dingra was a 22-year-old management graduate fresh out of college when he launched WATConsult in 2007. What started as a three-person social-media shop is now India’s most awarded full-service digital agency, with bottom-line year-on-year growth of 60 percent and 340 employees—almost 100 of them added in the last 12 months—in four locations around the country. Renowned for his foresight, Dingra has been the driving force behind this expansion, pivoting his company with skill into up-and-coming digital fields and attracting the attention of Dentsu Aegis Media India, which acquired a majority stake in the company two years ago. Now highly in demand as a speaker at global events, a lecturer at two of India’s top business schools and an awards show judge, Dingra heads a team determined to continue to push the agenda on digital in multiple directions. They will soon celebrate, for instance, the first anniversary of their ‘WAT’s Your Big Idea’ project, which provides a platform for students in India to share ideas that are judged by real brands and marketers.