Ana Lei is driven by the dynamic intersection of finance and technology. This fascination fuelled her career pivot from private banking into tech. She believes the world can be more equitable if complex financial systems are demystified through technology. A seasoned Lead Product Manager, Ana most recently played a pivotal role in Grab’s super-app journey, contributing to the early launch of GrabPay and the regional expansion of GrabFood across Southeast Asia. She led multiple products that supported millions of merchants with accurate and timely payments. Ana is currently pursuing her Master’s in FinTech at NYU Stern, where she explores how emerging technologies are shaping the future of financial products. She also mentors startups, product managers, and aspiring professionals building careers in tech.

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With 10+ years of experience working in New York City, San Francisco, China, Singapore, and now Australia, Jay Demetillo has built an impressive resume of experience and creating impact from 0 to 1. Jay has designed for Twitter, Pinterest, Yahoo, and Grab. Jay was an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and has spoken/lectured in China for ACG. He’s worked on notable projects like the Bay Lights, Gaspar Brasserie, San Francisco’s Park System SFPark, GrabFood, and Grab AudioProtect. Jay is passionate about building products and designs that are inclusive, having empathy for your users, and challenging your biases. Currently, he's at Canva where he led and launched Canva Sheets this year.

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Tara Hirebet is a seasoned product development and research leader with 18+ years experience working with big tech (Google), startups (Spotify) and super apps (GoJek, Swiggy, Rappi), creative agencies (RGA, TBWA), and government—delivering across the full E2E lifecycle. She builds things that don't exist yet— products, teams, offices and approaches —wherever the highest-stakes, messiest challenges live. Her strength lies in connecting systems thinking with user insight, then turning that into scalable solutions that unlock new market share, revive stuck products, or define what's next. Tara believes in seeing users and products as systems. Systems are much harder to abandon.

Tara has led multinational teams to address complex challenges, from combating rideshare fraud to launching and scaling products in mass markets like Southeast Asia and Latin America. A recognized thought leader, Tara has spoken at global events such as TEDx Singapore and SXSW and has been featured in leading publications including The Economist Intelligence Unit and The Business Times.

Tara is currently the Deputy Director of Research at GovTech and prior to that was engaged in fractional advisory roles in female health, neurodiversity, and Gen Z research. On the side, she is developing an Asia-America animation project with an ex-Pixar animator.

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Sherizan Sheikh is a designer and AI builder. He leads design at botim (MENA’s fastest-growing app), builds solo projects like Nasma.ai, a spiritual AI habit tracker, Getglocal.ai, AI localisation tool and runs Detach.to for designers who love AI. When he’s not in Figma or Cursor, he’s rallying builders at JFBI, a vibecoding community in UAE.

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Jocelyn is a product and design leader with 14 years of experience in building strong teams and creating impact for consumers and businesses. She helps teams achieve strategic excellence across stages and particularly loves the 0-1 stage. She has been the CEO of a Series A breast cancer biotech (acquired in 2019), founded two organizations, including a design firm based in NYC, and has been part of the founding team of two other companies. Her expertise is her ability to translate customer insights into concepts and products. Some careers highlights include being a Senior Product and Design Director at a design care agency in the US, learning a team to design products from healthcare to eldercare, teaching classes at Stanford's design school (d.school), and getting her career started in finance, at the International Finance Corp., World Bank Group based in Nairobi, Kenya. Jocelyn believes that the how matters as much as the what when building products. She is based in Singapore with her family.

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Assyaraf is currently a product design manager at Circles - a Telco SaaS company. With 10 years of experience in digital design, he is passionate about building great products as well as mentoring and growing design teams. Outside of work, Assyaraf enjoys the occasional travelling, discovering new music and supporting his favourite football team, Liverpool FC.

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Jill Quek is a design lead at Automattic. She currently manages a team of product designers, who work remotely from all over the world. Together, they build e-commerce software at scale for more than 3 million stores on WordPress. Hear us cover:

Sabina Fernandez is a UX Content Design Lead whose designs have unlocked millions-worth of spending with diverse-owned suppliers. How? Empathy. She puts herself in the shoes of others to make things better.

After launching user experience (UX) content design in Meta's APAC headquarters, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she continued to design with words and information, making Enterprise software intuitive and user-friendly at Meta. Before that, she crafted content for Yahoo, Audi, and Conde Nast Traveller.

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Winnie Chong has spent 17 years bridging creativity and commerce in design, advertising, and interactive media across the APAC region. She’s worked with some of the biggest names, from VMLY&R, a global digital ad agency, to SPH, where she played a key role in transforming Singapore’s largest media company from traditional publishing to the digital economy. Today, she leads User Experience at Bank of New York and is based in Singapore. Winnie’s passion is understanding what people truly want, whether it’s clients, customers or users, and making sure the experiences she designs are not only functional but also loved. She believes great design starts with listening—even when it means unlearning what you thought you knew. It’s about sparking curiosity, igniting imagination, and bringing a little wonder into people’s lives.

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Jonathan Yap is a design leader and community advocate exploring the evolving identity of design in Southeast Asia. Through Design Pay Asia, he dives beyond surface-level salary data to uncover deeper insights about career growth, education pathways, and the changing value of design in the region. With 15 years of experience across WeWork and Visa, and currently leading design standards at a Singapore bank, Jonathan brings a unique perspective on how design roles are transforming alongside technological advancement. His work combines quantitative insights with nuanced understanding of cultural and educational shifts in the design industry. As someone deeply invested in nurturing future design talent, he regularly speaks about the intersection of design education, industry needs, and regional identity in Southeast Asia's growing tech ecosystem.

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