Dr Teresita Cruz-del Rosario was formerly Visiting Associate Professor at the New York University in Abu Dhabi and also at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. She is currently affiliated with the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore where she is a research associate.
She has a background in Sociology, Social Anthropology and Public Administration from Boston College, New York University, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Vivy Yusof started blogging about random things and a decade later, has a fashion empire. She co-founded the FashionValet Group in 2010 with her boyfriend and has grown the multi-million dollar company into household names in her country, Malaysia.
Her brand dUCk is the largest modest fashion brand in Asia and was the first to collaborate with international brands like Disney, Mattel, Sephora amongst many others. Thing went so well that she decided to marry that boyfriend. They now have four kids together and are still in disbelief.
A law graduate from London School of Economics, Vivy would have much preferred if she learned software engineering instead. She has been an A-student all her life, and even took her SPM and A-Levels simultaneously, something she would never recommend to others.
Vivy Yusof has 1.8 million people following her on Instagram and 247,000 people subscribing to her YouTube channel. She’s not sure why, but she’s ok with it. She has been featured in many local and international publications like Business of Fashion, The New York Times and Forbes. She was also named as one of ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’, and selected as a Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum. Her parents still tell people about that.
Anitha Devi Pillai (PhD) has authored and edited creative and non-creative fiction books as well as translated a historical fiction novel, Sembawang: A Novel (2020) from Tamil into English, which was shortlisted for the Singapore History Prize, awarded by National University of Singapore and the Best Literary Book Award by the Singapore Book Publishers Association. She also loves writing poetry. Some of her poems have made their way into the classrooms in Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines. Many of her work explore themes such as identity, heritage and culture.
She is best known for her research into the Singapore Malayalee community that was supported by a National Heritage Board (Singapore) grant and resulted in the publication of From Kerala to Singapore: Voices from the Singapore Malayalee Community (2017). For this study, Anitha was awarded the Pravasi Express Research Excellence Award in 2017.
Her other books are Project Work: Exploring Processes, Practices and Strategies (2008), From Estate to Embassy: Memories of an Ambassador (2019), A View of Stars: Stories of Love (2020), A Tapestry of Colours 1: Stories from Asia (2021), A Tapestry of Colours 2: Stories from Asia (2021) and The Story of Onam (2021).
Anitha’s favourite genres to write and teach are the short story and creative non-fiction prose. Her stories have appeared in various anthologies including The Best Asian Short Stories 2019, Letter to my Son (2020) and Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (2020). She is currently working on a collection of short stories focusing on food and love.
She is the co-director of the 16th International Conference on the Short Story in English and editor for the prose (fiction and creative non-fiction) section of the Practice, Research and Tangential Activities (PR&TA) literary journal.
In a parallel life, she is an applied linguist and teacher educator at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore where she teaches courses on various forms of writing and trains English language teachers to teach writing. Anitha is a three-time recipient of teaching awards: Excellence in Teaching Commendation Award from NIE, NTU in 2018 and the SUSS Teaching Merit Award in 2013 and 2014 from the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
Asif Chowdhury is currently working as an executive management at a global semiconductor company where he also serves as the head of their Japan business. During his thirty plus years in the semiconductor field, Asif has travelled extensively to many parts of the world, especially in Asia giving him an opportunity to work with people from different cultures and various backgrounds. His career path has moved him and his family from Texas to Arizona to South Korea, to Japan to Massachusetts and more recently to Singapore. Asif worked as an expatriate in Seoul, Korea for three years and later in Tokyo, Japan for four years. His business development role in Japan took him all over the country and enabled him to work and interact with the Japanese people from all walks of life but especially with the sarariman from many top Japanese companies.
He has written for various trade publications and magazines and is a regular contributor to the Living in Singapore magazine published by the American Association of Singapore.
Asif holds several degrees including a BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas in Arlington, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas), an MS in Finance and an MBA from Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts).
Asif currently resides in Singapore with his wife and teenage son while his daughter is working as an aerospace engineer in Texas.
Lawrence is a Vietnam-born ethnic-Chinese Australian novelist and poet based in Melbourne. He has published two novels, four collections of miniature novels, four anthologies of prose, two collections of poems, and another set of short essays, all in Chinese.
His achievements and recognitions include fourteen different prizes in literature from Taiwan, Beijing, and Australia; and has been awarded fifteen service-related awards by the different Chinese societies, the premier of Victoria State, as well as the Prime Minister of Australia.
In 2005, Lawrence received the ‘Excellency in Contributing to Cultural Diversities Award’ from the Governor of the Victoria State, Australia.
In September 2018, he received the Award of Distinguished Contribution to the Australian Chinese Cultural Heritages by the Federation of Australian Chinese Cultural Associations
His writing have been incorporated in various dictionaries, his novels and poems are incorporated in the Anthology of Australian Chinese Literature.
Lawrence helped establish the World Chinese Writers Association of Exchange Inc in 2010, and then served as its President for two terms until 2016. This association has a membership of 133 writer-members. He is now the Honorary President.
He is also appointed as Honorary Head of the Chaoshan (Teoswa) School of Literature of Guangdong and the Honorary President of the International Association of Teochew People’s Literary and Arts.
Natalia Rachel has spent her life on a journey to answer the question ‘Why am I like this?’. Her existential inquiry started at age seven with a knowing that there was something fundamentally wrong with her world. Living through and recovering from relational trauma, mental health misdiagnosis and physical illness, led her on a healing journey exploring mainstream health and mental healthcare, complimentary health, the healing arts, somatics & spirituality. Her studies span hypnotherapy, regression, trauma, craniosacral therapy and other somatic healing modalities.
Natalia’s ability to illuminate unseen, non-verbal experiences and dynamics often has her labeled as ‘gifted’ or a ‘healer’. However, Natalia insists we all have these innate abilities and the way to reconnect to them is simply through our own healing which demands dedicated self-inquiry and embodiment practice.
A ‘peaceful activist’, Natalia suggests that our own healing transforms our social footprint. She hopes that her words ignite a way of living and relating that demand accountability and invite grace. Natalia distills complex concepts into palatable and poetic words that capture the hearts of her audience. Her well-meaning heart is evident in everything she shares.
Originally from Australia, Natalia lives in Singapore with her two young children and is the Founder of Illuma Health. The organization is committed to repairing and revitalizing the way we treat ourselves and each other and co-creating a trauma-informed world. Natalia continues to commit to her journey of embodiment through practices including somatic movement & martial arts, meditation and process work.
Vincent C. Sales has been a writer for over 25 years.
He began his career as an advertising copywriter in OgilvyOne and spent a decade in the industry working for agency startups and as a freelancer.
As a journalist, he was editor-in-chief of the consumer electronics magazine T3, which he helped to grow into one of the Philippines’ top men’s magazines.
After transitioning to digital, he has been a content creator for several Asian online platforms, currently for the health platform Hello Health Group.
During a five-year stint in his dream job as a stay-at-home dad, he wrote the novel The End of All Skies, the inception of which began over 20 years earlier.
He is the author of several other books, including a self-published anthology of short fiction, Children in Exile. He has also written a trilogy of best-selling genre novels for Summit Books.
He has been published in the Philippine Graphic and is a fellow of the 34th University of the Philippines National Writer’s Workshop.
He lives in Manila with his wife, three children, two hamsters, and a rabbit.
Adrian Choo is a highly regarded career strategist and thought leader in Asia. Adrian worked for large multinationals including Shell, GE Plastics, Boyden Global Executive Search and Lee Hecht Harrison. As a veteran headhunter and Career Coach, he authored Career-Crossroads in 2015 and founded Career Agility International two years later.
Today, he is Singapore’s top career expert and can be heard on radio every Saturday morning on MoneyFM 89.3 at his weekly segment, ‘Career 360 with Adrian Choo’.
Sze-Yen Chee is a Certified Master Coach and Career Coach with over 14 years’ experience in delivering Coaching programmes, training and facilitating workshops. She has coached over 2000 individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures, across multiple industries, including Financial Services, Oil & Gas, IT, Hospitality, Pharmaceuticals and FMCG. She enjoys motivating and helping individuals achieve career clarity and resilience in the face of corporate challenges.
In 2019, she co-authored The 7 Proven Secrets to Land Your Dream Job, The Exit Management Handbook and Accelerate Your Career.
Quyen Nguyen-Hoang is a writer, translator and art curator born in Vietnam. Her poems and translations have appeared on Poetry Magazine, Jacket2, the Margins, and various literary anthologies and exhibition catalogues. She is a Stanford University graduate, a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation grant recipient and a winner of the Winter/Spring 2022 Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation.
