Digital transformation is key in the planning of companies, governments, and individuals, as the world is changing beyond recognition. But for the world outside China, it often remains unclear how the most innovative country is going to influence their digital future. Speakers at the China Speakers Bureau can help you to make sense out of this often disruptive change of the world. Here we bring together a group of leading experts on China and how its digital transformation is going to change the world outside China too.
Winston Ma is one of a small number of native Chinese who have worked as investment professionals and practicing capital markets attorneys in both the United States and China. He is currently serving as a managing partner at New York-based CloudTree Ventures. Before that, he was Managing Director and Head of North America Office for China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund.
At CIC’s inception in 2007, he was among the first group of overseas hires by CIC, where he was a founding member of both CIC’s Private Equity Department and later the Special Investment Department for direct investing (Head of CIC North America office 2014-2015). He had leadership roles in global investments involving financial services, technology (TMT), energy, and natural resources sectors, including the setup of West Summit (Huashan) Capital, a cross-border growth capital fund in Silicon Valley, which was CIC’s first overseas tech investment.
He wrote books and speaks on the following subjects:
The Digital War: How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace
The Hunt for Unicorns: How Sovereign Funds Are Reshaping Investment in the Digital Economy
China’s Mobile Economy: Opportunities in the Largest and Fastest Information Consumption Boom
and additionally: China’s sovereign funds, China’s digital Belt and Road Initiative, big data and asset management, data regulation, privacy, blockchain, and digital currencies.
Sharon Gai has 10+ years of experience in leading positions at e-commerce companies, including five years at Alibaba.
Sharon Gai is a China-born Canadian who is an expert in e-commerce, digital transformation, and AI. She is the former Head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba and General Manager at a billion-dollar e-commerce unicorn. In her tenure at Alibaba, she has advised brands and heads of state in crafting their digital strategy with programmatic marketing and AI. She is the author of Ecommerce Reimagined: Retail and Ecommerce in China.
She has been the keynote speaker at TEDx, Singularity University, UBS, Nestle, Ecomworld, and Etail. She has appeared on ABC, CCTV, CBC, Techcrunch, Retail Asia, and The Next Web. Sharon is also a Global Shaper in the World Economic Forum. Sharon has an Honors Bachelor’s degree in International Development from McGill and a Masters in Information Management from Columbia University.
You can read more of her stories here.
William Bao Bean is Investment Partner at SOS Ventures and Managing Director Managing Director of Orbit startups.
Ashley Dudarenok is a China marketing expert with two decades of professional experience in China. Ashley is fluent in Mandarin, Russian, German and English.
Ashley is a China marketing expert, serial entrepreneur, professional speaker, bestselling author, vlogger, podcaster, media contributor, and female entrepreneurship spokesperson. She is the founder of several startups, including social media agency Alarice.com.hk and resources & training company ChoZan.co.
Ashley is a member of Alibaba’s Global Influencer Entourage and works directly with a Tencent core founder to conquer Western social media. She runs Asia’s #1 entrepreneurship vlog at www.youtube.com/c/
She travels from Hong Kong.
Alvin Wang Graylin is China President, HTC HTC中国区总裁.
Graylin has written a new book, Our Next Reality – How the AI-Powered Metaverse will Reshape the World, about the pending transformation of society this decade brought on by the convergence of AI and metaverse technologies which will be published by Hachette Book Group in early 2024.
Under his leadership, HTC has been voted as the top VR company in China at the World Conference of VR Industry (WCVRI) three of the last four years, and Graylin has been recognized by media/industry experts as the most influential person in VR/AR in China from 2016-2022.
Graylin first did his research in VR space 30+ years ago under the tutelage of Prof. Tom Furness (The Godfather of VR) at the Human Interface Technology Lab, and specialized in AI/Natural Language Processing while at the University of Washington and MIT.
Graylin has over 28 years of business leadership experience in the tech industry, including 20 years in Greater China.
Mark Schaub is a partner at King&Wood and Mallesons, the largest law firm in China and Australia combined. “In China, nothing is impossible … nothing is easy.” Mark Schaub is a prolific speaker who wastes no time in avoiding the real challenges in doing business in China. As a lawyer he had extensive experience in negotiating deals, firing people and otherwise dealing with the ignorance of companies entering the Chinese business minefield. Mark Schaub has 20 years of legal experience in China and was the first foreign lawyer to enter a Chinese law firm. Recently he has been focusing on how the Chinese government clears the way for innovation to move forward, especially in the automotive industry and self-driving cars.
In August 2018 he moved from Shanghai to London to become a partner at the law firm’s London office.
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Kaiser Kuo former Director, International Communication Baidu.com , and host at the renowned Sinica Podcast. Kaiser Kuo is an American-born writer, rock musician, technology watcher and cultural commentator. He served as director of international communications at China’s largest search engine, Baidu. He returned to the US in 2016 after 20 years in China after his longtime labor of love, The Sinica Podcast, a weekly podcast on current affairs in China, was acquired by New York-based SupChina. He now serves as host of Sinica and editor-at-large for SupChina. Kaiser has worked closely with the Chinese Internet since its very early days, working for companies ranging from startups to some of the biggest Chinese Internet firms, as well as for serving for several years as a technology reporter for the Silicon Valley-based magazine Red Herring.
Are you looking for more stories by Kaiser Kuo? Do check out this list.
Shaun Rein is the Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), the world’s leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China. He is one of the world’s recognized thought leaders on strategy consulting in China. In December 2017 he published his third book on China, The War for China’s Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, setting strategies for making money doing business with China. He published earlier The End of Copycat China: The Rise of Creativity, Innovation, and Individualism in Asia, in 2014, setting the agenda for China´s economic developments. His first book “The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that will Disrupt the World” was published in March 2012 by John Wiley & Sons in the US.
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