Sumedha, the visionary behind KinderPass, is driven by a profound commitment to child development during the formative years. Recognizing that the early stages are pivotal (90% of a child's brain development occurs during this period), Sumedha saw a pressing need to support time-starved parents juggling numerous responsibilities such as work, childcare, and elderly care.
Observing the concerning trend of children turning to phones as surrogate teachers and babysitters, she realized the importance of active play, adult interactions, and multisensory activities in nurturing young minds.
Leveraging her 13+ years of leadership at renowned companies like Pepsico and Procter & Gamble, spanning sales, research, and marketing in FMCG categories across APAC, Sumedha is now using technology to empower parents.
May currently heads an award winning vertical of engineers, Product Managers, Product Analysts and UI/UX designers to propel experimentation to the heart of all decision-making in ZALORA. She has historically held ownership and strategic decision making over the go-to-market plans of multimillion-user consumer products, apps and platforms across SEA. May has worked with major startups in Southeast Asia such as Mindvalley, Lazada, iPrice and ZALORA where she works on developing products in early-beta, bootstrap mode all the way to maturity. These experiences have imbued her with the talent of rapid prototyping to derive learnings when faced with multiple challenges. As a principal product manager, surfacing users’ underlying needs and translating these into tangible enhancements and solutions is May's lifeblood. She knows exactly how to understand users’ psyches in tangible, practical terms and most importantly, pair this understanding with concrete solutions in her products.
Daniel Ling is a regional Design Leader, and certified Design and Agile Coach with 15 years of experience in the financial and e-commerce tech space- who molded himself to be a “designer in a business suit”- strong in the Design Thinking process and yet relevant to the industry. He is proficient in the digital and transformational space- in the area of design leadership and management, research, strategy planning and coaching. As Head of UX, Wallet and Payment in Lazada as well as Head of Experience Design for Income and DBS, Daniel kickstarted design teams to deliver GREAT DESIGN to customers while fostering collaboration and trust with stakeholders through design. Through his work, Daniel had been mentor to Champion team in Ideasmash 2017 for NTUC Income, UX mentor for DBS Hotspot and Unicorn Program (Champion) 2015/6 and also guest lecturer to over 100 NUS Design students.
Awarded as one of Asia's Top-10 Women in IT, Dr. Meadows leads a Design Thinking and Innovation Center at a Forbes Top-20 International Business School, creating growth initiatives at the intersection of IT, business strategy, and design. Her research, consulting, and coaching focus on Leadership and Creativity. She co-founded an Advanced Technology Think Tank and Tinker Lab, envisioning the Future of Work (FoW) and Education, applying AI, biometrics, and other advanced technologies to leadership development, team productivity, and group innovation. She holds a Doctorate in Business Administration and IT from Harvard Business School and has over 20 years' experience in Asia, Europe, and North America as a consultant, coach, entrepreneur, eBusiness builder, innovation lab co-founder, and Accenture IT and Business Strategy consultant.
Erik has been a digital and creative leader since 1994. He has vast experience in digital transformation consulting, customer experience, UX/UI Design, Design Thinking and creative work. Offering a unique blend of strategic insights, problem-solving ability and creative leadership, Erik is perfectly set to lead any innovation discussion. He has developed his own Design Innovation framework called Humanistic Thinking™ and a model on Customer-Centric feedback called Worst Experience Score (WXS). Erik speaks on digital transformation, innovation, design, startups and customer-centric operations.
