Myanmar Business Resilience: Looking Ahead

Brad Jones is the Chief Executive Officer of Wave Money, a role he has held for the last seven years. Wave Money is a fintech joint venture in Myanmar owned by Telenor Group, Yoma Strategic Holdings and Yoma Bank. Wave Money is the leading mobile financial services provider in Myanmar, serving millions of customers monthly across a network of more than 68,000 agents.

Previously Brad headed mobile money and innovation for Visa in Asia Pacific, North Africa and the Middle East. He has also been an emerging payments consultant to World Bank Group, working in a variety of markets including the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and China. Prior to Visa, Brad was the founding Managing Director of Wing Cambodia, the first bank-led mobile money deployment in Asia.

Brad has worked in financial services for 21 years, and is well known in the emerging payments and mobile money industry as a delivery focused executive. Brad holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Griffith University of Australia and post-graduate business qualifications from the University of Queensland. He is currently studying for a Graduate Certificate in Fintech at University of New South Wales.

Hiroyuki Ota is a foreign attorney and a part of the Japan Desk and Myanmar Practice at Rajah & Tann Singapore. He has an LLM from Columbia Law School and is qualified to practise in Japan, New York and Singapore (Foreign Practitioner Certificate). Hiroyuki started his career in a well-established law firm in Japan, and joined Rajah & Tann in September 2014. His work in Myanmar has earned him well-deserved recognition as a "Highly Regarded" lawyer by IFLR1000.

He has a wide range of experience in assisting multinational corporations in entering into the South East Asian market, which includes countries such as Myanmar, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, India and Vietnam, and has a deep understanding of the region. His experience includes mergers and acquisitions, issuance of bonds, corporate restructuring and providing corporate and regulatory advice.

Kim Edwards has worked for the World Bank since 2014. He is currently Program Leader for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Lao PDR, and Senior Economist for Myanmar and Thailand. Previously he was the Senior Country Economist for the small Pacific Island Countries. Prior to joining the World Bank, he worked at the Reserve Bank of Australia in various roles, including as a senior economist and manager of the International Finance section. He holds a Master in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Kyaw Min Swe is the founder and CEO of Ezay, a company that empowers Myanmar’s rural retailers to grow their businesses and serve their community. Ezay digitises rural retail stores and provides them with better products and pricing, delivery and payment terms. Since founding in late 2019, Ezay has grown to serve thousands of small retailers across Myanmar, 95% of which are women-led. Kyaw Min Swe was previously Senior Director with Oway Ride where he pioneered the role of three-wheelers in Myanmar’s urban transport sector, a vehicle he now utilises within Ezay to maximise efficient deliveries.

Naithy is YCP's Partner based in Myanmar office. She has over 9 years of consulting experience and has worked extensively with MNCs exploring investment opportunities in Myanmar over the last 5 years across strategy and operations consulting projects such as market entry strategy formulation, organization optimization, business / product planning with other project stints in Australia, Iran, Malaysia, Singapore, and UAE. Prior to joining YCP Solidiance, Naithy was a Senior Associate at a Moody’s group company, where she led various investment due diligence projects for financial institutions. Naithy graduated with an MBA from the National University of Singapore and Cornell University and holds a Bachelors of Science degree from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Dr Godfrey Tan, also known as Wai Lin Tun, is Co-Founder, Executive Chairman and CEO of Frontiir. Dr Wai Lin Tun was born and raised in downtown Yangon and completed his high school education at Dagon 1. He graduated with B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) with the Highest Honors from UC Berkeley. In addition, he holds S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in EECS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis was about improving aggregate user throughput and providing fairness in multi-rate WiFi networks. He has published more than a dozen papers in wireless networking, cloud computing and business intelligence and holds several US and international patents in the area of networking and computing. Read more: https://www.frontiir.com/about_us/governance-of-frontiir/

Ms. Mariam Sherman, a British national, joined the World Bank in 1996 as consultant in the Middle East and North Africa region.  Since then, she has held various managerial positions, including Director of Strategy and Operations in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank, World Bank Country Director based in West Bank and Gaza and Country Manager for Afghanistan. Other work experience in the World Bank has included assignments in the Indonesia Country Management Unit, the West Bank and Gaza Country Management Unit, and on central policy issues. Ms. Sherman is based in Yangon since March 2020.

Graduated from Singapore Management University, Bachelor in Economics, upon graduation, Li Jun spent two years in Unilever Singapore as a customer development executive. Li Jun moved to Yangon, Myanmar in 2012, and spent 7 years heading Premium Distribution, one of the leading distribution business in Myanmar. In September 2019, Li Jun was transferred from Premium Distribution to join its holding office, City Holding as the group commercial director In June 2021, Li Jun was assigned to another new challenge to be the acting CEO for City Ventures, a venture company with business interests in Agriculture, Manufacturing, Finance, Logistic, and Tech& Data

Paing Min Htwe joined Delta Capital Myanmar as an Associate in 2019 and is based in Yangon. He gained cross sector expertise and deal experience having worked on several transactions (mainly manufacturing and financial services). He has over 7 years of professional experience in corporate finance and business development in Myanmar. Paing graduated from Singapore Management University with a Bachelor of Business Management, majoring in Finance. He is a CFA charter holder and a member of the steering committee of the CFA Community Myanmar.

Cheery Zahua is a human rights and women's right activist who has lived and worked in Myanmar, India and Thailand. She was a founding team member of the Women’s League for Chinland that documents human rights violations in Chin State, and systemic sexual violence against Chin women. She is also a former Parliamentary Candidate of Chin Progressive Party.

Htet Myet Oo is the founder and currently Managing Director of RTG Group. Htet founded Rangoon Tea House in November 2014 and is passionate about all things related to innovating not only new dishes and drinks, but also pushing boundaries culturally. Awarded the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Asia in 2016, Htet continues to push boundaries within the F&B scene in Myanmar.

Su Su Tin is the Managing Director of EXO Travel Myanmar, Yangon Excelsior Hotel, Sanctum Inle Resort and Annam Myanmar trading and distribution company. She is a successful women entrepreneur working in tourism industry and trading & retail industry.

She is also a current executive committee member of the Myanmar Women Entrepreneurs Network (MYANWEN).

Matthew Viner is the Director of the association. Matt is the Investment Manager for Emerging Markets Entrepreneurs – Myanmar (EME). EME launched in 2018 and has since invested in seven Myanmar startups with a ticket size between USD 50-250K. EME is sector agnostic, seeking to find the best founders with the highest potential for growth across industries that can use tech as a lever for scale. They are a hands-on investor and provided more than 1500 hours of direct support to their portfolio across 2019 in areas from sales and marketing, operations, finance and fundraising. Matt takes care of the EME team, supports company strategy, and manages deals from pipeline through to close and support.

Prior to EME Matt worked in consulting and launched a spin-off hardware / software enterprise in SEA.

Nathan was born in Myanmar but lived in the United States for 36 years before returning to Myanmar in January 2016. He served formerly as the General Manager of John Deere Myanmar – Capital Automotive Ltd, and he is fluent in Burmese. After retiring from US Army, he joined private sector with multiple companies in US, Dubai and Myanmar as CFO, COO and General Manager. With specialty in development project management and contract farming with local farmers, he served as General Manager/Chief of Party for a $2.3M project called “Water for Livelihoods” funded by Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT) in Southern Shan State, Myanmar.