My guest this episode is Frank Lavin, former Citibank executive, US Ambassador to Singapore, and the Founder and Chairman of ExportNow, a business designed to deliver US-brand products to China. Frank and I spoke at the outset of the pandemic. Since then, things have grown worse. Markets are volatile, trade is disrupted, and cities the world over are in varying stages of lockdown. Our conversation is an attempt to pull back momentarily in order to reflect on some of the broader trends that infor...
Apr 10, 2020•29 min•Ep. 196
My guest this episode is Dr. Prabhavati Dwabha, the passion and vision behind Ramana’s Garden, which for the past 20 years has offered refuge for abused and abandoned children from all parts of India. Most know her as just Prabha, She’s American by birth but India has served as her adopted home for almost 40 years, and what she’s been able to achieve here over the course of four decades is something quite astounding. Prabha has succeeded where countless others would have thrown in the towel. Wha...
Mar 31, 2020•43 min•Ep. 195
My guest this week is Edward Booty, Founder and CEO of Asia-based reach52, a company established three years ago to provide health screening and distribution services for remote communities in Asia using digital apps and mobile communications. First, fair warning: This week’s episode is less than cheery. It’s a cautionary note for what may lay in store for the world’s poor and under-resourced. While relatively wealthy nations reel from the sudden onset of Covid-19 and all attempts to contain the...
Mar 27, 2020•44 min•Ep. 194
What are you doing – you alone – to safeguard your personal health and well-being? It’s a question that keeps popping up for me. Ultimately, who’s responsible for healthcare? Governments? Doctors? Pharmaceutical companies, perhaps? How about hospitals? This week’s guest, Dr. Bruce Lipton, offers some insight. His 2005 book, Biology of Belief unleashed a flurry of new questions and critique around the role of conventional science and the attempt by the pharmaceutical industry to kidnap and contro...
Mar 17, 2020•29 min•Ep. 193
This week I’m in conversation with Dane Chamorro, senior partner at Control Risks. The firms charter is to help organizations succeed in a volatile world, and nothing has created volatility more than the Coronavirus. Some of our listeners might recall the conversation I had with Ben Rolfe, in November last year. In the first half of our discussion, we celebrated his organization’s efforts to combat and largely eradicate malaria in the region. But we also discussed the inevitable rise of other in...
Mar 15, 2020•38 min•Ep. 192
My guest this week is Cary Horenfeldt, a self-styled digital payments expert. He’s an advisor to Bain & Company and consultant to an ever-growing FinTech community in Asia and beyond. Based in Singapore, Cary sees growing enthusiasm for digital payments. Regulators are relaxing rules, making way for new entrants, while merchants contemplate ways to drive sales across new payment platforms. The only real loser in this payments frenzy is cash, and no one seems too sad to see it go. So-called d...
Feb 25, 2020•40 min•Ep. 191
On Saturday, February 8, deaths attributed to the Coronavirus surpassed those from the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. It’s the speed of the spread of this particular disease that’s cause for concern. Data shows that it took just 20 days, compared to 80 for SARS, to result in 800 deaths. But data can be misleading. Because the infectious footprint of the Coronavirus is so much larger than SARS with the Chinese city of Wuhan at the epicenter, it feels precarious. Against this backdrop, I received a m...
Feb 11, 2020•29 min•Ep. 190
This week, we’re back with a program favorite, Jim McGregor. For Jim, China has been a stomping ground for more than 30 years and he brings to our conversations the thing we appreciate the most – perspective. To truly understand China is to witness the country through the long arc of history. It’s as consistent as it is surprising. In certain instances, it takes a crisis to reveal the underbelly of a nation steeped in secrecy. This time, the crisis came in the form of the corona virus, striking ...
Feb 07, 2020•36 min•Ep. 189
This week I’m in conversation with Elisa Mallis, Vice President and Managing Director at the Center for Creative Leadership. She’s talking about Corporate Boards in Asia and how the time has come to re-evaluate the role of the Board member in order to establish a new kind of leadership culture. The Center, better known by its acronym, CCL, has made its mark as one of the world’s preeminent leadership training and development firms. For decades, CCL has researched global leadership trends then ta...
Jan 31, 2020•35 min•Ep. 188
This week I’m in conversation with Sasha Conlan, Founder and Owner of Singapore-based Sasha’s Fine Foods. We’re back in Singapore, and it’s that funny time of year where we find ourselves sandwiched between the Christmas season on the one end and Chinese New Year on the other. Over the course of my thirty years in Asia, I’ve come to appreciate this 4-5 week “in-between” period as a time to reflect all that has occurred and all that has yet to come. More often than not, food is involved. Whether ...
Jan 17, 2020•28 min•Ep. 187
This week, I’m in conversation with Sriven Naidu. Sriven works in higher education and professional development consulting. He’s based in Singapore and has found a discernable increase in interest from corporations desperate to improve employee satisfaction, team performance, and commercial results. Week-in, week-out, we introduce topics that organizations in Asia (and elsewhere) are grappling with. This week, we take a look at mindfulness. The term means different things to different people, an...
Dec 13, 2019•41 min•Ep. 186
In this week’s episode I’m in conversation with Nick Fang, Managing Director of Black Dot, a Singapore-based media consulting and advisory firm. In our conversation we banter about the idea of what it means to design and imbed a national narrative. Nick has worked as a journalist, a presenter and a public commentator. Since leaving journalism, he’s dabbled in politics, served as a member of a local think-tank, and contemplated what we’ll call the evolving Singapore narrative. It’s about the stor...
Dec 07, 2019•42 min•Ep. 185
In this week’s episode I’m in conversation with Ben Rolfe, CEO of the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance. While most of us are out and about, getting on with living and working, a small but essential group of researchers are watching the way we live and work; studying disease patterns and contemplating the odds of epidemics. Communicable diseases come in all shapes and sizes. And while many are encouraged by human activity relating to how we eat, greet, wash and copulate, others are more insi...
Nov 01, 2019•36 min•Ep. 184
My guest this week is young explorer and accomplished photographer, Alex Pflaum. In our conversation we turn back time and wander into the wily world of the ancient Silk Road, where Alex spends his time these days. He’s betting on a renaissance among budding Central Asian economies, not in trade, but in tourism. At the time we spoke, Alex was working round-the-clock, finalizing the layout for his new book. Captured in his images is the awe-inspiring expanse of virgin landscape. There’s a raw bea...
Oct 18, 2019•34 min•Ep. 183
My guest this episode is Kyle Hegarty, Singapore-based entrepreneur with an expertise in sales training and development. For years Kyle has worked with multinational and Asia-based sales teams and culled from this experience a treasure-trove of tales on what it takes to do business in this part of the world. His new book, soon to be released, is titled, The Accidental Business Nomad: A Survival Guide for Working Across A Shrinking Planet . Kyle’s diatribe comes at an interesting moment. There ar...
Oct 11, 2019•39 min•Ep. 182
My guest this week is Gove Depuy, sustainability consultant, community-based planner, project leader and an advocate for bio mimicry. What are we talking about? Islands, and the growing idea that islands might serve as learning ecosystems for new ways of communing with the Earth we inhabit. It’s not an entirely new idea. In 1962, legendary author Aldous Huxley, wrote and published the book Island, a s a utopian companion to his better known and more dystopian novel, Brave New World . Inspired by...
Sep 20, 2019•39 min•Ep. 181
My guest this episode is Rebecca Fannin, founder of Silicon Dragon Ventures and author of the new book, Tech Titans of China. She’s been on the program once before. Exactly one year ago we spoke about the rise of China’s tech giants, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, known collectively as the BAT. Four years earlier, Alibaba became the largest initial public offering in US history and true to investor expectations, the company under Jack Ma grew from strength to strength. Rebecca points out how few W...
Sep 13, 2019•32 min•Ep. 180
My guest this week is Rob Garrett, Innovation and Impact Investment specialist and Managing Partner at Hezar Ventures. We hear a lot these days about the escalating global wealth gap. How the richer are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Much of that wealth is acquired and accrued by family dynasties. Globally, something in the range of US$ 6 trillion is thought to be controlled by private family interests, with Asian families accounting for nearly a third of that. For historical and po...
Sep 06, 2019•37 min•Ep. 179
My guest this week is healthtech advisor, novelist, and lucid dreamer, Tony Estrella. We live in stressful times. Maybe not more stressful than times of yore when our ancestors lived in fear of war, famine, or plague. But a particular form of stress brought on by always-on technology, chaotic schedules, and data overload. Our brains and our bodies can only withstand so much. And to manage that edge, the modern-day worker employs alcohol, exercise, or pills to calm the nerves and relax the body. ...
Aug 30, 2019•28 min•Ep. 178
My guest this episode is Oliver Tonby, Chairman of McKinsey & Company in Asia Pacific. As the firm’s top representative in the region, Oliver has developed a unique perspective on Asia, informed by access to the region’s presiding corporate and government leaders. In a newly released report entitled “Asia’s Future is Now,” he and his colleagues point to an unprecedented rise in Asia’s commercial, trade and infrastructure development. Nothing, so it appears, can keep Asia down. For decades, t...
Aug 23, 2019•36 min•Ep. 177
I have a very special guest this episode, our hundredth episode of Inside Asia! Anne Hockett is a healthcare professional and wellness advisor. She’s lived and operated across Asia for more than three decades and through her medical insight and devotion to the art of wellness, she offers a unique blend of Eastern and Western healing. In this week's conversation we discuss some of the apparent limitations of Western medicine and how the world is increasingly open to alternative methods. And we de...
Aug 16, 2019•48 min•Ep. 176
My guest this episode is serial entrepreneur, tech optimist, venture capitalist, and long time friend, Paul Meyers. WI first met Paul in 1997. He sat behind a custom-built desk-top terminal with plans to deliver cable-TV news across high-speed networks. Real-time news at your fingertips. Can you imagine? It was a revolutionary idea at the time. Today, its yesterday’s news. Paul has spent nearly 30 years operating in Asia, first as a film-maker then as a pioneer in the interactive and mobile spac...
Aug 01, 2019•36 min•Ep. 175
Brian Rogove, Founder and CEO of Singapore-based A-Star Education is in the for-profit education business. And when you consider the premium that Asian families place on education, it’s easy to see how profits might follow. Brian doesn’t beat around the bush when talking about education’s return-on-investment. He says that while “for-profit” education feels like a dirty phrase to those in the West, Asians see the private sector as critical in shoring up public education short-falls throughout th...
Jul 26, 2019•46 min•Ep. 174
In this weeks episode we meet politico, public relations specialist, former ambassador, private equity advisor, digital nomad, and public commentator, Curtis Chin. Curtis is many things to many people. And while he likes to think of himself as a kind of modern-day Renaissance man, his parents say that’s code for “unemployed.” We’re talking about what it means to have what Curtis calls, “a portfolio” life.” We also move the conversation in the direction of Asia in transition and take from Curtis ...
Jul 19, 2019•38 min•Ep. 173
China is not the nation it once was. It’s grown up, become stronger; more resilient and self-assured. Its influence in matters of global geopolitics is absolute and bending the knee to the US is most assuredly not in the script. Jim McGregor, long-time China resident, corporate advisor and respected insider, shares his unfiltered opinion on the evolution of US-China relations and how and why things have gone so off kilter. In this week’s Asia Insider Minute, we take a cut at thinking past the bl...
Jul 12, 2019•40 min•Ep. 172
Neil Bearden is an INSEAD Professor, investor, decision scientist, and children’s book author. Neil is many things, but above all others, he’s a story-teller. On this week’s episode he shares his views on the art of story-telling and why it is so essential to lean into story in this age of science. And why we, as humans, have found such meaning and utility in the telling and receiving of stories.
Jul 05, 2019•48 min•Ep. 171
This week’s guest is Glenn Chickering, Head of Faculty at the Green school on Bali, Indonesia. Students there live and breathe the environment and all things sustainable. Raise the subject of climate change with any 4th grader here and you’ll get an earful on everything from personal accountability to corporate responsibility. Sitting in the heart of the jungle, surrounded by rice paddies and flanked by a river, there’s arguably no school like it in the world…
Jun 21, 2019•27 min•Ep. 170
Gregory Burns is an artist, story-teller, and Olympian. It’s an unlikely combination of talents and the fabric of a man who’s made Singapore his home. The 19th century American writer and Naturalist, Henry David Thoreau claimed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Is it possible that the artist offers us a way out?
Jun 14, 2019•47 min•Ep. 169
This week’s guest is Ian Chapman-Banks, CEO of Sqreem, an AI-enabled adtech company working to take on the US 1 trillion-dollar global advertising business - a sector ripe for disruption. It’s no easy feat to entirely unwind an industry eco-system, but that’s what Ian and dozens of ad-tech entrepreneurs around the world are trying to do. As he rightly points out, the playing field has shifted. Advertising goes where consumer eyeballs roam. And in this case, digital platforms are the place where ...
Jun 07, 2019•44 min•Ep. 168
Take a quick poll among your friends and associates on what they consider to be one of the greatest challenges of our day, and increasingly, liberals and conservatives alike will say climate change. The subject has had its share of detractors and political nay-sayers, but with the passage of time, evidence mounts that humans – not Mother Nature – are the undeniable chief culprits of this pending disaster. Acknowledging the crises is one thing. Actually doing something about it is another. Where ...
May 24, 2019•35 min•Ep. 167
