Community

The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a community of innovators from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Search current members and alumni by year awarded, sector or region.

Nicolas Wertheimer

Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability Officer, Waterplan, Uruguay

Nicolás Wertheimer, a medical doctor and social water entrepreneur for almost a decade, is Founder of Proyecto Agua Segura, a Latin American consulting firm that provides access to safe water and hygiene training to over 300,000 people. Wertheimer has delivered 3,260 water projects in collaboration with Fortune 500 companies. As a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum and member of the Youth Congress for Sustainable Americas, he has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 and a finalist for the Chivas Venture. Currently, he is Co-Founder of Waterplan, a climate platform that assists multinational companies in measuring, responding, reporting and monitoring climate water risk. Waterplan combines operational data and satellite imagery to assess water risk and offers tailored mitigation and adaptation solutions.

Raylene Whitford

Director, Canative Energy, Canada

Raylene Whitford is a Cree-Métis iskewew (woman) from Treaty 6 territory in Canada. The first in her family to graduate from university, Whitford began her career as a chartered accountant with KPMG in London. She has held leadership roles in various organizations around the world, including in a company listed on the London Stock Exchange, delivering a $40 billion capital efficiency project for an integrated energy company in the Middle East, and working with Indigenous businesses in Ecuador. In 2019, Whitford returned to Canada specifically to advance Indigenous participation in the energy transition. She is a member of the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board and Chairman of TC Energy's Indigenous Advisory Council. She is also Founder of INDIGI-X, a global exchange connecting Indigenous leaders in Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Silvia Wiesner

Consultant, Leadership Advisory, Egon Zehnder, Germany

Silvia Wiesner is active in Egon Zehnder’s Consumer Practice, leveraging her many years of marketing, sales, and general management experience in the consumer goods industry across various European markets to develop bold ideas and identify ideal solutions for clients. She excels at shaping visions and inspiring others, aided by her multicultural background and command of several languages. Silvia is also passionate about driving diversity, equity and inclusion on executive and board teams. Before joining Egon Zehnder, Silvia spent 17 years in marketing, sales, and general management roles at Unilever, most recently in Brussels as the Managing Director for Belgium and Luxembourg. Prior to that she was based in Hamburg where she held the position of General Manager and Vice President for Marketing in the food category in German-speaking countries.
Silvia earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Graz in Austria while spending an exchange year in the USA. She furthered her education with courses at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, INSEAD, and the Corporate Governance Institute. Outside work, Silvia drives gender equity in decision-making roles in Europe as a member of the executive committee of European Women on Boards and has been identified by BeyondGenderAgenda as “one of the top 100 women for diversity” in Germany and selected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She also belongs to the LEAD Europe network, the Club of European Female Entrepreneurs, and the Corporate Governance Institute in addition to mentoring for the EMEA Fellowship Program of the Marketing Academy and nushu Female Business and providing strategic advice to IMAGINE (cofounded by Paul Polman).

Kiah Williams

Co-Founder and Managing Director, Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine - SIRUM, USA

Kiah Williams is Co-Founder and Managing Director of SIRUM, a non-profit social enterprise that drives the future of healthcare by connecting people with surplus medications. Prior to SIRUM, Williams helped create the Alliance Healthcare Initiative, a public-private partnership spearheaded by the American Heart Association and Clinton Foundation that engaged Fortune 500 companies to expand healthcare benefits for 2 million children. Her work at SIRUM has been recognized by Forbes 30-Under-30 and Marie Claire's America's 50 Most Influential Women. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University.

Gareth Wong

Head, Group Strategy and Projects; Head, Indonesia Urban, Sembcorp Industries Ltd, Singapore

Gareth is currently Head, Group Strategy & Projects in SembCorp Industries Pte Ltd. Seated in the office of the Group President & CEO, Gareth is responsible for streamlining the Group’s strategic plans and key initiatives as a leading energy and urban solutions provider. He is also concurrently the Head of the Group's industrial & urban developments portfolio in Indonesia.

Headquartered in Singapore, Sembcorp is a Temasek Portfolio Company and a global expert in energy transition and sustainable development. Sembcorp has a balanced energy portfolio of ~20.5GW, with 13GW of renewable capacity comprising solar, wind and battery energy storage systems. The company also has a proven track record of transforming raw land into sustainable urban developments, with a project portfolio spanning over 14,000 hectares across Asia.

Prior to joining SembCorp, Gareth was the Founding CEO of Mitbana Pte Ltd, a joint-venture fund management company of Mitsubishi Corporation and Surbana Jurong.

Gareth is a member of the WEF’s Forum of Young Global Leaders. He also sits on the Executive Committee of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in Singapore and is a member of the Urban Land Authority’s (URA) International Panel of Experts.

Gareth holds a BSc. in Economics (First Class Hons, Dean’s List) from University College London, and a MSc. in Political Science from Columbia University in the City of New York

Weiwei Xing

Partner, Bain & Company Inc., Hong Kong SAR, China

Weiwei Xing is a Partner at Bain & Company. Based in Hong Kong, she leads the Asia consumer products practice with a particular focus on Greater China. Beyond her work at Bain, Weiwei devotes her expertise to advising non profits in operational improvement, strategic planning and fundraising.

Yuito Yamada

Partner, McKinsey & Company, Japan

Yuito Yamada is a Partner at McKinsey & Company, serving as Asia’s co-leader and Japan’s leader for McKinsey Sustainability, the firm’s global client service platform to help all industry sectors achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In this role, his influence and activities span topics as broad as sustainability transformation, portfolio decarbonization, and green business globalization, particularly in support of the Global Energy & Materials practice (covering players in the power, chemicals, materials, and agriculture sectors), the Financial & Banking practice (serving the world’s largest financial institutions on sustainability topics) and the Public Sector practice. After an adolescence that spanned Singapore, New York, and London, Yuito returned to Japan to pursue a bachelor’s degree in economics from Keio University. He has also a Masters degree from the University of Cambridge in Sustainability Leadership from CISL (Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership).

Charles Yang Zhaoxuan

Special Advisor, Singapore

Charles Zhaoxuan Yang has served as So-Young International Inc.'s independent director since May 2019. Mr. Yang is the chief financial officer of NetEase, Inc., NASDAQ: NTES, and a director of KANZHUN LIMITED (NASDAQ: BZ). Before joining NetEase, Inc. in 2017, Mr. Yang was an executive director of the China technology, media and telecommunications, and corporate finance team at J.P. Morgan Securities (Asia Pacific) Limited based in Hong Kong and worked there for almost a decade. Mr. Yang holds a master's degree in Business Administration from the University of Hong Kong and a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University with majors in Economics and Mathematics. Mr. Yang is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in the State of Michigan.

Luhui Yan

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Carbonstop, People's Republic of China

Luhui Yan, Founder and CEO of Carbonstop, Master of Science in Computer Science at Oxford University, Expert Reviewer of the UNIPCC, Representative of China at UNFCCC Climate Change Conference for eight consecutive years, Deputy Secretary General of China Low Carbon Economic Committee. As China’s first carbon management software and consulting service provider, Carbonstop was founded in March 2011 by Luhui Yan. In the past ten years, leading Carbonstop, Mr. Yan has provided carbon management software and consulting solutions for over 1,000 enterprises and organizations, including 100 Fortune global 500 companies and top global organizations, such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, JD, KFC, Zara, Chanel, SKP, Vanke, Starbucks, ByteDance, Meituan, Hillhouse, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, China Coal, etc. In the Internet field, Luhui Yan led the project “Green Packaging and Logistics” and “Ant Forest” for Alibaba.

Isabelle Yap

Executive Director and Vice-President, East West Banking Corporation, Philippines

Isabelle Yap is vice president, special-projects officer, and executive director at EastWest Bank. As a former consultant at McKinsey, she has experience in serving multiple clients across the Philippine region, and she was part of the Management Associate program at Singtel, one of Asia’s leading telcos. A digital native, Yap brings in new perspectives and new ways of engaging with customers. She helped spearhead the launch of Komo, a digital banking service under EastWest Bank, and serves as chair for f(dev), the digital-venture builder and innovation factory of Filinvest Development.

Yoshiki Yasui

President and Chief Executive Officer, Yasui & Company, Japan

Yoshiki Yasui is President & CEO of Yasui & Company, an independent financial service firm focused on financial advisory, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganizations, financial restructuring as well as merchant banking focusing on early stage companies with multiple portfolio companies in the U.S. and Japan. Currently also serving as the mentor and innovation fellow for Harvard Innovation Labs.

Born in Toronto in 1985, Yoshiki spent his childhood in Toronto and New York until moving to Japan at the age of 10. Yoshiki studied at the University of Sydney and Waseda University. Upon graduation, Yoshiki began his work in the Investment Banking Division for Lehman Brothers. Later he worked at a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm, DCM where he was responsible for investments in the US, Japan and China. Yoshiki founded a mobile payment company Origami in 2012, which was later acquired by a Japanese listed company Mercari. Yoshiki has been a board member of the Payments Japan Association, as well as the New Industrial Structure Council of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan. He was also selected as Young Global Leaders Class of 2020 by the World Economic Forum. Awarded a certificate of completion for the Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Executive Education.

Yeoh Keong Hann

Executive Director, YTL Power International Berhad, Malaysia

Yeoh Keong Hann is a third-generation Malaysian business leader passionate about the transformative power of combining technology and entrepreneurial spirit, as well as the influence and values of family businesses in building a more inclusive and sustainably-focused society. He is Executive Director of YTL Power International Berhad, one of South-East Asia's largest infrastructure and energy companies, leading the group's operation and setting the vision of its new business and digital venture arms. He led the team that set up Geneco, Singapore's second-largest provider of retail electricity. Yeoh is also a General Partner of the SEA Frontier Fund where he invests in and mentors the next generation of game-changing startups in South-East Asia. He is a member of the Board of Wessex Water in the United Kingdom and of YTL PowerSeraya in Singapore. Yeoh is a graduate of the University of Oxford.