Speakers

Paul G. Amorese

Paul is a recognized thought leader in the areas of workforce planning, location strategy, portfolio optimization and brand & workplace design. In turn, he believes when companies truly engage in understanding and applying these disciplines, the outcome will create a competitive advantage for attracting and retaining talent.

As Yahoo!’s Senior Director of Real Estate & Workplace - International, Paul and his team led an aggressive 3-year plan to rebalance the international portfolio, in 30 countries, and to introduce transformative workplace designs. These new work environments foster collaboration, innovation and brand experience all while maximizing the functional space.

While at Sun Microsystems, Paul was the Global Planning Manager and owned the process in formulating strategic real estate plans that supported Enterprise, LOB and Geographic priorities. His experience at Sun Microsystems demonstrated the value and correlation between proactively managing a real estate portfolio and ensuring that current and future business needs are supported with the right space at the right time and at the right cost.

James Calder

James leads Woods Bagot’s global consulting team and is a board member, drives the global research initiatives and sits on our Global Studio Executive. James is a practitioner, facilitator and part-time educator interested in all facets of the strategy, design and use of the workplace. He has extensive experience in Europe and the Asia Pacific with the world’s pre-eminent organisations across most business sectors.

James has developed workplace strategies for lawyers, professional services firms, investment banks, retail banks, universities and the public sector. James has a global reputation for providing clients with strategic consultants advice on the built form of the future workplace.

He has a keen interest in the design process and works closely with the Design Stream to help ensure Woods Bagot Design process achieves the best results for all stakeholder.

Meng Chew Ching

Meng Chew Ching is an experienced Corp Real Estate (CRE) executive well known in the Asian CRE circles, being one of the early pioneers in this industry in Asia. Currently he is the Regional Director of Worldwide Real Estate and Facilities (WRE&F), AsiaPac/China for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a leading global pharmaceutical company headquartered in London and he is responsible for its real estate portfolio in this region.

Prior to joining GSK in Jan 2011, Meng Chew was the Regional Director of Workplace Resources for Nokia for Asia Pacific/China and had been at Nokia since mid 2005. He was also a member of Nokia’s Global Leadership team for Workplace Resources, which is responsible for Nokia’s CRE portfolio worldwide.

Meng Chew was the project owner for Nokia’s Beijing BDA Campus over the 2 year project period (2006-2007). This building was awarded LEED Gold (New Construction) Certification by US Green Building Council (USGBC) in early 2008, a key milestone in both Nokia’s World-wide portfolio and China’s Construction Industry. This Campus has also won other awards such as “Top 50 Working Environment in China” by the China Government and “Best Large Office Interiors” by Contracts Magazine of New York.

Prior to joining Nokia, Meng Chew headed up the CRE function for Sun Microsystems in Greater China for 9 years, and was responsible in the initial roll- out of Sun’s “Flexible Offices” in 1999 in Asia, starting with Hong Kong.

Meng Chew was also the Chair-person of the China Chapter for Corenet Global, a non-profit global CRE organization, from 2004-early 2008. He remains an active member participating and presenting in both Worktech and Corenet events.

Gordon Falconer

Gordon Falconer is a Director of Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) within its Urban Innovation practice, and has more than 20 years of experience in city strategic design, urban property development, project valuations / acquisitions/ feasibility, property / infrastructure financial structuring, and cluster / innovation creation.

Prior to Cisco Gordon was involved with Masdar City in Abu Dhabi ( UAE ), one of the world's most innovative greenfield & sustainable city projects, where he headed Strategy and Real Estate. During this time he was heavily involved with the strategies for both the sustainable real estate components of the City and sustainable utility integration across areas such as clean energy, water, infrastructure, ICT and how they could be financed, structured and deployed.

Gordon is based in Singapore and is also involved with Cisco’s Smart +Connected Communities program and selected key Urban Innovation engagements with Cities, Governments’ and corporations in South East Asia, India and internationally.

Scott Hartman

Scott Hartman has been with Regus for over 10 years. In his current capacity he is the Vice President of Global Accounts for the APAC and American regions with Regus. Scott and his team is responsible for consulting with multi national companies to use the Regus product line to support the mobile worker, small offices, and facilities outsourcing. Prior to the 10 years at Regus, Scott has served 13 years in a leadership capacity within the logistics and facilities management industry.

Soon Poh Heah

Soon Poh Heah is Director, Biomedical & Chemicals Cluster and Electronics, Info-Comm and Media Cluster for JTC Corporation a leading agency in Singapore developing high quality industrial facilities. Soon Poh began his career in JTC as a Mechanical Engineer and since taken on various roles within the corporation including strategic planning and promotion of the Developer Partnership Programme for Wafer Fab Parks, Jurong Island and one-north.

Soon Poh graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) – 1st Class Honours.

Jason Heredia

Jason Heredia is vice president of Marketing for Steelcase Asia Pacific. Appointed in June 2011, he leads product marketing, brand communication and marketing in the Asia Pacific region.

Previously, Jason was Vice President of Marketing for Coalesse, a premium brand of Steelcase Inc. focused on creating furnishings for the new ways people work. Coalesse collaborates with the world's leading designers to create inspirational furnishings that provide new live/work lifestyle solutions that incorporate insights about the changing nature of work.  Appointed to this role in March 2007, Jason oversaw Coalesse’s global marketing and product portfolio.

He joined Steelcase in 1992 as a Field Sales Manager for the Southern California and Denver areas. In 1997, he became a senior consultant for Steelcase’s Advanced Solutions Team in Los Angeles and worked with leading edge West Coast clients developing workplace solutions that addressed alternative methods of work and real estate utilization.

Ken Heth

Ken Heth has spent the past three years as SAP’s Group Head Global Facilities Management for Asia pacific and Japan. The SAP portfolio in APJ is approximately 2 million square feet and they have recently completed a project in Singapore consolidating three offices into one office of 135,000 square feet. Previously he worked for Gartner in the USA, UK, Australia and Singapore for 13 years managing their real estate portfolio in the US and corporate services organisation in APJ. Ken graduated from the University of Rhode Island, USA with Bachelor of Science degree.

Daniel B. Johnson

Daniel B. Johnson is Accenture’s global director of Corporate Real Estate Workplace, directing a global team of professionals who define, implement and provide ongoing analysis for Accenture’s current and emerging workplace and real estate as well as service delivery strategies. Accenture’s real estate portfolio of more than 12 million square feet includes hundred of properties in more than 49 countries.

In addition to his primary role, Mr. Johnson recently completed a six-month assignment as the Greater China Facilities & Services lead, responsible for aligning Accenture’s Greater China growth strategy (which is forecasting 40 percent compound growth through 2010) with real estate and workplace strategies for Greater China.

He joined Accenture in 1998 to support and implement new workplace concepts in Accenture’s North and South American offices. His expertise in occupancy and workplace strategies, benchmarking and cultural integration provides a strong base for creating and analyzing strategic planning options.

Mr. Johnson graduated from University of California, Berkeley and lives in San Francisco.

Sarah Khoo

Sarah Khoo is the Real Estate Strategy and Portfolio Lead for Asia Pacific for Shell. She is responsible for engaging senior business leaders, provide feasibility studies and strategy development for market entries from real estate perspective, conduct portfolio analysis to reduce occupancy cost, and provide real estate governance. She also works closely with the Shell Mergers and Acquisitions, various Business Development, and Strategy teams, providing real estate advice and project support. She delivered the first office in Jakarta to fitted-out to LEED standards, and the product was featured in the Indonesia Design Magazine, and Indonesia's Business Week. She is also currently working on a rationalisation plan for the Group's real estate footprint in a specific country in Western Europe.

In her previous roles she led Procter & Gamble’s corporate real estate department in Asia that managed real estate transactions within Asia Pacific. This experience built on the previous where she worked with Far East Organization doing retail and commercial leasing and marketing. She also practiced as a quantity surveyor and worked on several major condominium developments in Singapore.

Eric Legere

Eric leads a team of strategic consultants throughout M Moser’s global group focusing on the Asia Pacific region. He has worked in strategic planning and change management throughout the region since 1998 and joined M Moser in 2001.

Effective implementation of alternative workplace strategies is Eric’s expertise and passion. He sees great value in collaborating with a multi-disciplinary team to develop holistic solutions that are pragmatic and offer a real business advantage. He takes great satisfaction in being actively involved throughout the entire project from the very initial visioning stages, brief development, design development through to post occupancy evaluation.

Eric’s recent project experience has focused on new build campus projects where strategic planning is used to inform and shape the architectural response. Eric’s role also includes developing workplace analysis tools, methodologies, facilitating workshops, organisational modelling and client benchmarking to better understand how the workplace can support business objectives. In short, knowledge that informs the creation of productive workplace environments.

Andrew Marshall

Andrew Marshall is an experienced workplace strategist with over 12 years of workplace design and change management experience for a number of organisations both in house and external. He jointly leads the WorkPlace Services team for Johnson Controls Global Workplace Solutions across Asia, and has worked on projects for the BBC and Barclays Bank in the UK and most recently for Ericsson, Motorola and CSC across Asia.

Richard Middleton

Richard Middleton is the Executive Managing Director, Occupier Services for the Asia Pacific region.

In this role, Richard is responsible for providing the integration, consistency and excellence in the service delivery we provide to occupier clients across all of our service lines - Tenant Representation, Project Management, Facilities Management, Strategic Account Management and Strategic Consulting; and strengthen our global relationships with occupiers and implement global best practices.

Adam Mundy

Adam Mundy began his interior design career in 1994 and joined M Moser Associates in 2002. His previous experience in residential and leisure projects helped form his unique perspective on corporate office design, and he has become well-known for a creative flair which leads to incisive solutions.

Adam engages in extensive user group consultation to build the functional, strategic and cultural baseline from which his design concepts develop. The end-results – as seen in his contributions to recent Nokia office projects in Beijing and Singapore – are often marked by a distinctively ‘organic’ approach to innovation, with progressive aesthetic and functional qualities evolving directly from (and in line with) in client values, goals and operational needs.

In addition to his projects for Nokia, recent years have seen Adam making vital contributions to designs for Newbridge Capital, National Australia Bank, MLC Insurance, Yahoo!, and PwC.

Jeanie Ng

Jeanie is responsible for Workplace Strategies in Deutsche Bank globally, and has been with Deutsche Bank since 2006. An architect by profession, Jeanie later acquired her business management qualifications and devoted most of her career in the area of strategic planning for CRE, and using workplace planning as tools to maximise business performance - which has been her core interest in the past eight years. Jeanie played a key role in introducing and developing the concept of flexible working (DB New Workplace) in Deutsche Bank worldwide, and measured savings for management reporting. Today DB has more than 4,500 staff committed to DB New Workplace, with another 2,000 rolling out in the next 2-3 years spreading over the three continents.

Michelle Pattison

Michelle Pattison is global lead for Unilever’s Agile Working Programme, based in London UK. She has worked at Unilever, one of the largest consumer product multinationals, for 14 years starting in Information Technology and broadening into culture and transformation programmes on a global scale. Her involvement in Unilever’s Corporate Centre redevelopment (100 Victoria Embankment) and the UK & Ireland business and workplace integration project (Leatherhead), has given her unique insight into the effect of workplace change on team effectiveness, personal motivation and productivity.

In her current role, she has been developed Unilever’s global Agile Working principles and practices and supports the business to adapt to this way of working. Her experience continues to build working with over 20 global Unilever Agile Working projects in Singapore, Russia, Mexico, Thailand, UAE and Italy as examples.

Sheridan Perkins

Sheridan Perkins joined Standard Chartered Bank in May 2005 and now serves as Head of Corporate Real Estate Services, Asia. In this role, Sheridan is responsible for all BAU service delivery activities across the Bank’s Asia portfolio of more than 1,500 properties in more than 20 countries, covering approximately 12m square feet. During Sheridan’s tenure, the Bank’s population has grown from around 33,000 staff in 2005 to more than 80,000 today, with operating profits for the Bank now topping $6 billion annually.

Prior to joining Standard Chartered, Sheridan spent four years with CB Richard Ellis in Hong Kong as the Asia Pacific Account Manager for Nortel Networks, before taking on an EMEA & APAC role, based in London.

Philip Ross

Philip Ross is an author, commentator and consultant specialising in the impact of emerging technology on the world of work and the workplace.

He has worked with organisations such as Ernst & Young, Eversheds, McKinsey & Co, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Royal Bank of Scotland on future workplace concepts based on emerging technologies.

Philip has spoken at conferences around the world including the Wall Street Journal Europe CEO Forum on Converging Technologies and Corenet’s Global Summits in Beijing, Sydney, Orlando and Melbourne.

In 1994 he founded Cordless Group and wrote and published The Cordless Office Report. He has written three books on the future of cities, work and workplace: The Creative Office, The 21st Century Office and Space to Work (all co-authored with Jeremy Myerson) and has contributed to a number of other books including the Corporate Fool and the Responsible Workplace

Neil Salton

Neil Salton is Director of Consulting for Woods Bagot Asia.

Neil is an experienced and very business focussed workspace consultant. He is particularly interested in helping clients understand the cultural, psychological and technological dimensions of the workspace, to create more effective and productive space. Currently based in Hong Kong, he has lived in Asia for several years and has delivered projects in Hong Kong, Singapore, China, India and Australia.

Neil has worked with many global clients such as HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Macquarie Bank, SAP, Nokia, and Microsoft and his work ranges from Workplace Strategy, Change Management to Design Briefing. As well as his work for Corporate clients he has also worked on a number of School and University projects as part of the UK Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

As well as consultancy, Neil is a well known speaker and moderator at major industry events in Asia and has been chairman of WorkTech on 3 occasions in London, New York and Shanghai.

Gerry Taylor

Gerry Taylor is the founder of Gerard Taylor Design and the Creative Director of Orangebox.

He studied product design at the Glasgow School of Art and achieved a Masters Degree in Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art, London. On graduation he was hired by the influential and pre-eminent Italian Designer, Ettore Sottsass and joined his Milan design studio. For five years he worked with brands such as Knoll, Esprit, Artemide and Phillips and participate with Memphis, which went on to dominate the international design scene during the 1980s

Returning to London he established his own design consultancy to work with diverse UK companies including French Connection, BBC, Habitat and Selfridges. In addition to his retail and interior work his studio collaborated with International office furniture brands including Knoll, Steelcase and Bernhardt.

Most recently Gerry has focused on his Creative Directors role at Orangebox, helping the company to grow into one of the UK’s most progressive, successful and innovative office furniture companies.

Tony Wong

Tony Wong is Director, Workplace Resources, Asia Pacific and Japan, Cisco Systems Inc., a Registered Architect and seasoned Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management executive with experience in managing multi-discipline international teams to deliver real estate projects and services to meet business results. He moved from working as an Architect to CRE&FM since 1990, and had covered almost all aspects of CRE&FM for JPMorganChase and Morgan Stanley, acting as Vice President and Executive Director respectively to manage their Asia premises. After serving in investment banks for 20 years, Tony took on a new challenge in January 2011 and moved to Cisco Systems to be the Director, Workplace Resources for Asia Pacific and Japan, managing delivery of Real Estate, Construction, and Facilities Management.

Tony was the Founding Chairman of the CoreNet Global Asia Pacific Chapter in 1993. He was also one of the earliest members of the IFMA Hong Kong Chapter. In 2009 he was elected a full Board Member of CoreNet Global, the first full representative from Asia. He was also active in the past in the field of Architecture in organisations such as Hong Kong Institute of Architects, International Union of Architects, Commonwealth Association of Architects and Architects Regional Council of ASIA.