Shyra is an aspiring writer and a data analyst who balances her love for numbers with her passion for storytelling. Largely inspired by the visionary works of Hayao Miyazaki, she shares in his belief that any woman is capable of being a hero as any man.
Her creative pursuits allow her to explore the depths of human experiences and emotions, where she often strives to craft strong, multidimensional female characters who challenge expectations and embrace their individual strengths.
When she isn’t writing, she unwinds by watching dramas and anime, as well as diving into the immersive worlds of gaming. An avid reader with an insatiable curiosity, she cherishes discovering stories that ignite her imagination and fuel her creativity.
Jane Lee is an innovation leader in the food and agriculture sector, with a corporate career that began at McKinsey & Company. A former professional climber, she led Singapore’s first women’s team to the summit of Mount Everest and holds the record as the first Southeast Asian woman to complete the Seven Summits, scaling the highest peak on each continent. She has a Bachelor’s in English Literature and Economics from the National University of Singapore and an MBA from Yale University. Her proudest (and least glamorous) record remains going 26 days without a shower while skiing across Greenland, an experience she strongly advises against.
Mae Kwan is a wellness creative who helps people break free from limiting patterns and step into their authentic power. Originally trained as an architect in London, she established her interior design business and a fashion accessories label after moving to Hong Kong, where she also began studying Vedanta with her mentor—a relationship that continues to deepen her spiritual practice today.
Mae’s life took a pivotal turn when she relocated to Singapore in 2015 and transitioned into the wellness industry. Certified in Tibetan Singing Bowl healing, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Feng Shui design, along with being a trained yoga instructor who has also studied BodyTalk and Mindscape, Mae brings an intuitive approach to her work, creatively blending different modalities including meditation to meet each client’s unique needs.
In 2022, Mae created UNSTUCK™, a transformational framework that has become the cornerstone of her practice. Through workshops, speaking engagements, and immersive experiences, she uses this method to guide individuals and teams from survival mode into creative flow, helping them heal past wounds, restore balance, and unlock their full potential.
Mae uses emotions as a roadmap for transformation, helping clients connect the dots between their limiting beliefs, old narratives, and behavioural patterns to create profound shifts that ripple through every aspect of their lives. Her work centres on a simple yet powerful belief: that by honouring our emotions and inner wisdom, we can unravel the stories that keep us stuck and create lives that truly reflect who we are meant to be.
Mahita was born in Singapore to South Asian parents, raised by a Cantonese nanny and educated at a Catholic school. After diverse roles in hospitality and advertising, Mahita gave up corporate life for writing and has published four books. She is a staunch advocate for mental health and migrant worker welfare. Mahita often participates in mental health and writing events, including Singapore Writers Festival. She counts novels, cake and Singaporean street food as her greatest weaknesses. On any given day, she can be found either immersed in a book or enjoying a meal at a hawker centre. Mahita has twin daughters in their thirties and lives in Singapore with her husband. 15 Grams is Mahita’s fifth book.
JC Punongbayan is Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics (UPSE). He earned his PhD in Economics from the UPSE in 2021, where he also graduated summa cum laude and valedictorian in 2009 and was awarded the José Encarnación Jr. Award for Excellence in Economics and the Gerardo P. Sicat Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis. He writes a weekly economics column for Rappler. He was named one of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for 2023 by JCI Philippines and the TOYM Foundation. His first book, False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them, was published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2023.
Jadet Kamjorndet was born in Surat Thani Province, in the south of Thailand. In 2008, his short fiction chapbook Hanuman Tramples the City won the Thailand Indy Book Award. Three years later, his first book-length work of short fiction It is Too Hot to Sit in the Sun Drinking Coffee won the Southeast Asian Writers Award. Selections of this work were translated by Marcel Barang. In 2020, Jadet Kamjorndet won the SEA Write Award again for another work of short fiction, The Night of the Year of the Tiger and Other Animal Stories. His most recent novel, Sex Doll Goddess, was shortlisted for the 2023 7 Book Award. He is currently at work on a new novel.
Hunter Therron has lived in Thailand for six years. He works as a freelance translator and currently teaches English full-time at a secondary school in southern Thailand. His work has appeared in the Tahoma Literary Review, the Pinch, the Superstition Review, and others. He has also been working on a novel for the past seven years. Sex Doll Goddess is his debut novel-length translation.
Idris Jala is a leading authority on transformation. He served Shell for 23 years, turning around two major companies to record profits, and heading global retail and a Swat team for troubled operations, covering over 100 countries.
He took a pay cut and gave up benefits at Shell to join Malaysia Airlines as CEO in 2005 against the advice of his family. He returned the ailing national airline to record profits from record losses in just two years.
The Malaysian government appointed him minister in 2009 to spearhead the transformation of the government and the economy to take it up to new levels. He set measurable key performance indices for ministers and numerical targets for achievements, a first.
He now heads a consultancy, PEMANDU Associates, to bring his copyrighted ‘Six Secrets of Transformation’ and the ‘8-Step BFR (Big Fast Results) Methodology’ to both companies and countries throughout the world.
In 2014, Bloomberg Markets ranked him amongst the top ten most influential policy makers in the world. Harvard, Princeton and the World Bank wrote case studies on his work. McKinsey and BCG interviewed him and wrote articles about his programmes and methods.
He is chairman of two public-listed companies, and pro chancellor and honorary professor at Sunway University in Malaysia. He conducts two courses a year on ministerial leadership at Harvard for top government leaders. He was a Visiting Practitioner at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government.
Guna has been a business journalist, analyst, editor, columnist and author for over 45 years.
He first met Idris Jala after he became CEO of Malaysia’s national airline, Malaysia Airlines, in 2005, and undertook a major, successful transformation of the airline, returning it to record profits. Guna has closely followed Idris’ career path since and has been transfixed by his achievements and methods.
He is an author of three books, including the first book written on the world’s biggest kleptocracy 1MDB – a Malaysian strategic development company gone terribly wrong and corrupt – and two others on the history of Malaysia’s central bank and a biography of the first Malaysian central bank governor.
Guna tries to break down complex things into smaller bite size pieces for consumption by the general public. He spent many hours over many months talking with Idris for this book, his main brief being to make the book readable, concise, clear and interesting.
He thoroughly enjoyed helping to write this book and learned much about transformation. It is his professional opinion, as an analyst and journalist, that this book offers a great and invaluable contribution to the limited literature on true, tremendous transformation which lasts.
Jinny Koh’s stories and essays have appeared in The Iowa Review, Cream City Review, Pembroke Magazine and Kyoto Journal, among others. She graduated Phi Kappa Phi with a Master of Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, where she served as the Fiction Editor for The Southern California Review. She is the author of The Gods Will Hear Us Eventually (Ethos Books), a creative writing lecturer at the National University of Singapore, and co-founder of Deep Narrative, a content studio specializing in print, digital, and exhibitions.
