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.

Caroline Berube

Managing Partner, HJM Asia Law and Co. LLC, People's Republic of China

With entrepreneurship running in her blood, Caroline has always been seeking the next big innovative challenge. As a young Canadian lawyer fresh out of McGill Law School, Caroline took the leap in moving to Asia in 1998 and has spent her life becoming an expert in Asian law with the goal to demystify Asia to SMEs and PE firms from the Western part of the world and contribute to their expansion in Asia.

It wasn’t long before she became the go-to source for people and SMEs and PE firms who want to understand how to grow the Asian market and navigate the Asian legal landscape successfully.

Today, she has an established reputation in the international business community as an entrepreneur of 5 start up over the last 2 decades and an expert advisor on M&A cross-border transactions, commercial law, technology transfer and intellectual property matters and has been the managing director of HJM Asia Law for the past 16 years.

In Caroline’s life, the only constant is growth.

She convinced her younger brother, Maxime, a trained industrial engineer, to join her in China in 2005 when they founded their first business, Jade & Co, a consulting firm for SMEs expanding in Asia offering engineering, legal, marketing and accounting services.

Later, in 2007, Caroline and Maxime founded AsiaTech QC, an automated quality control platform for engineering products manufactured in China, and significantly grew the value of the company, leading to its acquisition in 2013.

In 2010, the duo started Komaspec who is now a leading manufacturer of high-end metal and plastic industrial products based in Guangzhou, China. Today, the company boasts three state-of-the-art smart manufacturing facilities, employs 200+ workers, and serves more than 100 customers in more than 25 countries worldwide, recording 30% YoY growth with a turnover of more than USD 17 millions in 2022. At present, Caroline acts as board member of Komaspec.

A few years later, in 2016, she combined her entrepreneurial background with legal expertise, to bring to market ProsocecAsia, an innovative company providing secretarial, accounting, and compliance services for SMEs companies alongside an automated platform for compliance.

In 2015, she was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and became a member of YPO in 2021.

Understanding the role of not just mentorship, but sponsors in achieving entrepreneurial success, Caroline set up her own non profit organisation in 2016. The Young E3 Entrepreneur Fund inspires and supports a new generation of young entrepreneurs between 16 and 25 years old, by connecting them with industry experts and sponsors who can help them build a strong foundation for business success. She raises funds to finance these projects through her runs and many other initiatives.

Viewing growth and knowledge sharing as two parts of the same equation, Caroline is a regular speaker at international conferences and has been a visiting professor at Université Laval (Canada), Bocconi University, and the Sorbonne Assas Law School. She has authored the practical book "Doing Business in China" published in French and English, and has been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Bloomberg, the Straits Times, the Business Times, Les Affaires, and La Presse.

She remains an active member of the international business community, sitting on multiple boards of listed and private companies, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce (President), the South Africa Chamber of Commerce in Singapore, the China Working Group of the International Bar Association, and is the appointed legal adviser of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. She is an independent director of Savaria (sis.to), a listed Canadian company in the mobility industry.

Kenny Cai Yanqing

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BottleDream, People's Republic of China

Yanqing (Kenny) Cai is Co-Founder and CEO of BottleDream. In 2012, he quit his job as an UX designer and travelled the world for 18 months, documenting the stories of young people from more than 20 countries who were changing the world. That experience helped shape his vision for BottleDream, now one of China’s top social innovation platforms. He has inspired more than 150,000 Chinese young people to care about social innovation and sustainable development. He is now building a co-creation community with DAO spirit which dedicates to incubate social innovation actions and projects.

Ron Cao

Founder and Managing Director, Sky9 Capital, People's Republic of China

Founder and Managing Partner, Sky9 Capital, early-stage China technology venture capital firm with presence in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Silicon Valley. Board Member of PPDai (PPDF), Tujia, FangDD, eBroker, etc. Named as a Top Chinese Venture Capitalist by Forbes China and CBN Weekly over multiple years. Former: Co-founder of Lightspeed China Partners; Managing Director and Head of China, Lightspeed Venture Partners, started its China operations in 2006; MD of KLM Capital, and Ops/Marketing Manager Intel.

James Chau

President, China-United States Exchange Foundation, Hong Kong SAR, China

President of the China-United States Exchange Foundation and World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador. Special Advisor to Dr. Margaret Chan, Dean, Tsinghua Vanke School of Public Health. Interviews with world leaders in politics, science and health, including: Nobel laureates Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Muhammad Yunus. Currently, Host of The China Current. Formerly, Guest Presenter, BBC World News and Main Anchor, China Central Television. 2016, appointed by the World Health Organization as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Sustainable Development Goals and Health. 2009-2016, UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador. Frequent public speaker; chair and moderator of high-level international events led by Laura Bush, Bill Gates, Angela Merkel, Erna Solberg, Justin Trudeau. Studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music and graduated from Cambridge University. Trustee, MTV Staying Alive Foundation; Advisor, Global Health 50/50, The Commons Project; Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum.

Timothy Chen

CEO, VIA China; Head of Business Development VIA/HTC, HTC-VIA, Taiwan, China

Bachelor's in Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Since 1996, with VIA. Began career at the company's Taiwan headquarters, managing the sales and marketing offices of Japan and Korea. Responsible for VIA worldwide business development and strategic partnerships for VIA Technologies, a leading innovator of PC silicon and platform technologies. Besides presiding over VIA's Global Sales & Marketing, serves as technical assistant to the President and CEO of VIA, Wenchi Chen. Board and advisory positions at a number of technology companies. Involved in social ventures, social media, premium content providers, hardware companies at the semiconductor and system level, faith-based endeavours, a premium winery in China as well as being a hobbyist angel investor.

Fan Ling

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

Scholar and entrepreneur to bridge machine intelligence and creativity. Founder of Tezign.com, a leading technology start-up with the mission to build digital infrastructure for creative resources. Founding Chair, Tongji University Design Artificial Intelligence Lab. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; Aspen Institute China Fellow. Member, IEEE Global Council for Extended Intelligence. Recipient, National DDF Award (2018). Doctorate, Harvard University; Master's degree, Princeton University. Recently published From Universality of Computation to the Universality of Imagination, a book on how machine intelligence would influence human creativity.

Amy Gao Chao

Founder, Shanghai May Foundation, People's Republic of China

Amy Gao comes from Non-profit background. Her passion in making change in the education field led to her own initiative, the May Foundation that focuses on helping college students build capacity. Gao has a masters degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Gong Yingying

Founder and Chairlady, Yidu Tech, People's Republic of China

Chairlady of the Board, and Founder of Yidu Tech Inc. Ms Gong is responsible for the overall strategy, business direction and management of the Company.

She has previously worked for Credit Suisse First Boston, Global Infrastructure Partners LLP, Deutsche Bank AG and other well-known investment banks and institutions, where she accumulated extensive investment experience and industry insights. Ms. Gong also founded Guizhou Province Xiao Yingying Charity Foundation (贵州省笑盈盈慈善基金会) in March 2019, a charitable foundation focusing on the support of children with rare or major illnesses.

In 2019, she was elected as one of the nine Young Global Leaders from the Greater China region by the World Economic Forum. She holds an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He Jin

Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer, Maimai, People's Republic of China

Mr. Jin He co-founded MAIMAI, the China-based profession service and social-networking platform in 2013. MAIMAI has been leading for years in China profession social market with over 120 million users. Mr. He is passionate about building up the energizing and improving work environment for the workforces and bringing more opportunities for the society. Mr. He is YGL 2020 from China. Mr. He is also passionate about A.I. technology. He has deeply implemented A.I. into his profession service product and constantly explored the more suitable service scenario.

He Zhengyu

Chief Technology Officer, Ant Group, People's Republic of China

Dr. Zhengyu He is the CTO at Ant Group and leads the Group’s technical infrastructure. His current focus of work is on building a financial-grade cloud-native computing platform for Ant. Dr. He strongly believes security and reliability, more now than ever, have to be the core of the technical infrastructure for financial institutions to ensure business continuity, while continuously improving user experience and satisfaction. Under his leadership, Ant has evolved to the fifth generation of its technical infrastructure, serving ~1.3 billion users of Ant and its global partners worldwide. Dr. He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. He also received master's and bachelor's degrees respectively from the Beijing Institute of Technology.

Kent Ho

Founder and General Partner, S28 Capital, Hong Kong SAR, China

Kent Ho is the Founder and Managing Director of S28 Capital – a multistage technology venture capital fund primarily focused on Enterprise Saas and Enterprise Infrastructure in western markets. Being a venture investor for over a decade, Kent has evaluated thousands of investment opportunities across industries, stages, and geographies, and some of his investments include: Zoom (ZM.NSDQ), Coupang (CPNG.NYSE), Palantir (PLTR.NYSE) and Noom. He is passionate about working closely with founders on go to market strategy and thinking about both domestic and international expansion; and has built an unique and proprietary global network.

Kent is also Co-Founder of Singapore based Wine Portal Holdings Pte. Wine Portal is present across the vertical and horizontal value chain of the wine industry - from boutique vineyards; to negociants and wholesale distribution; to storage; to private client sales and premium wine lounges (Park 90) and e-commerce. We actively seek out opportunities globally to grow our portfolio and coverage of all things wine.

Kent has formerly served as a board member of Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP) (2017-2023), and previously served on its investment committee. HKSTP is Hong Kong Government's most well-funded technology and innovation platform (HK$40 billion).

He holds a BA degree from Duke University, an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and is an Honorary Trustee of Peking University.

Huang Dinglong

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

Huang Dinglong is an entrepreneur in the technology field in China. His passion and Malong’s AI+ visual recognition technology is one of the leading players in China and in global markets as a groundbreaking solution. This includes solving the dependency on high-quality human annotated data. Malong is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.