Inside Asia Podcast

Re-imagining Health (w/ Anne Hockett)

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 delve into the mind-body pattern and explore ways that story and metaphor help us detect and embrace our personal patterns of unwellness.

Thousands have benefitted from her synthesis of knowledge, expertise and empathy. If I’m long-winded in my description and admiration for Anne, it’s due in part to the fact that she’s also my wife. I’ve had the benefit of watching her evolve as a practitioner and a human. Best of all, I’ve been on the receiving end of her love and support. 

Asia’s Impact Investing Landscape (w/ Paul Meyers)

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 space. He’s a serial entrepreneur who in recent years has turned his attention to vetting, advising and funding start-ups from Indonesia to Bangladesh. Paul’s CV reads like an Alice in Wonderland journey through the early years of what we then called the interactive movement. It’s a mind-bending experience to explore all that Paul has witnessed.

 

Education ROI (w/ Brian Rogove)

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 the region. Dissecting the relative strengths and weaknesses of education in Asia is as complex and diverse as the region itself. When it comes to public education, quality is oftentimes directly proportional to the level of government spending. Building schools and staffing them with well-versed teachers takes time and money. It’s for that very reason that large-scale private equity firms are entering the space. Baring, Blackstone and KKR are just a few of the many major investors increasing their holdings in education companies worldwide. And Asia is a key focus.

The Portfolio Life (w/Curtis Chin)

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 his view on the emerging and potentially disruptive influence of China. His comments come at a critical time when the world is debating how best to engage with this emerging Superpower in order to secure political détente, new prosperity, and greater integration of our global economy.

The Great China Divide (w/ Jim McGregor)

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 blame and towards the solution - and imagine a future where policy-makers on both sides see a future fashioned from collaboration versus competition.

The importance of story-telling (w/ Neil Bearden)

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.

Sustainable Education (w/ Glenn Chickering)

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…

The Artist's Way (w/ Gregory Burns)

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?

AI and the Ad Industry’s Death Rattle

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 consumer buying decisions are taking place.

The Angry Clean Energy Guy (w/ Assaad Razzouk)

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 to begin? My guest this week, Assaad Razzouk, says there are lots of moving parts in this climate change puzzle, but holding corporations accountable, he says, could prove a catalyst.

Assaad has a vantage point on the subject. He’s Group Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Sindicatum Sustainable Resources, a Singapore-based clean energy investment group that buys, owns and operates projects throughout India and Southeast Asia. From this vantage point, Assaad has learned a few things about government intransigence, corporate behaviour, and public indifference. Rather than sit on what he knows, he’s taken to social media to beat the drum in favour of environmental responsibility.