Sherman Cheng joins APRU with a background of over 20 years in commercial experience spanning across US and Hong Kong in roles ranging from financial consultant to senior financial controller. A graduate from UC Berkeley in Economics, Sherman also holds a Master of Business Administration from Santa Clara University and a Juris Doctor from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. As a qualified accountant, Sherman takes charge of APRU’s business processes, financial control, HR and work flow management.

Mr Yan is an industry leader with more than35 years of experience in the information technology industry. As the CEO of Cyberport, Mr Yan leads the digital technology flagship focusing on talent cultivation, industry development, and the integration of new and traditional economies. Prior to joining Cyberport, Mr Yan was the Executive Director and CEO of SUNeVision and had held various senior management positions in large consulting and IT services companies including Accenture, Tradelink and Computer and Technologies.

Mr Yan has been active in public services, serving as a member of the Council of the City University and the Hong Kong Metropolitan University. He is also a member of the Human Capital Committee of Financial Services Development Council, a member of the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications, and various industry or professional organisations in the I&T sector. He is a life-time fellow of the Hong Kong Computer Society.

Mr Yan holds a BBA Degree from CUHK and was conferred the Honoree of the Year by the CUHK Chapter of Beta Gamma Sigma in 2020. He also received Executive Education from the Harvard Business School.

Sam Barratt is Chief of the Youth, Education and Advocacy Unit in UNEP’s Ecosystems Division and Co-Chair of the UN Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI). At UNEP, he founded the Playing for the Planet Alliance, a collaboration with the video gaming industry to nudge gamers’ behaviour and for the industry to use cleaner energy, launched Earth School with TED-Ed and oversees the work of UNEP’s Youth and Education Alliance (YEA!) with networks representing over 2,700 universities from around the world. He also manages the non-formal education programme work with the Girl Guides and World Scout Movement which has seen the launch of the Tide Turners Plastic Challenge Badge programme and a new Earth Tribe initiative on environmental education.

Patrick Williams (PhD) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His primary areas of research are culture and identity, wherein he splits his time between the study of subcultural identity and authenticity on the one hand, and game-related experiences and identities on the other. Among his many publications, he has authored and edited several books on culture, identity and/or games, including Gaming as Culture: Essays in Social Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games(2006), Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts(2011), and Studies on the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity (2020). His current research focuses on the significance of DIY culture and identity in the growth of esports in Singapore.

Dr. Hyun is the founder of an unprecedented Esports advisory practice at KPMG Consulting, Japan. Formerly an aerospace/automotive engineer (PhD in Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan ‘11), Hyun’s experience growing up in South Korea, the birthplace of esports business, has been central to his success with the advisory business, which has a pool of major clients including the Japanese government. Now he is the sector lead of the Media and Gaming industry at KPMG Consulting.

Hyun has been teaching Esports business at Keio University since 2018, and he has frequently appeared in major media outlets such as The Nikkei, the world’s largest financial newspaper. He was the editorial supervisor for the acclaimed book A Primer on Esports Business (まる わかり！eスポーツ・ビジネス), published by Nikkei Mook, and a serial contributor for major Japanese business media outlets such as The Nikkei, Nikkei Business Daily, and Diamond Online. He has been invited to speak on international esports/gaming business by The Nikkei, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Japan Esports Union, The Legal 500, MIT Horizon, and CBS Radio. He has also authored an Amazon- bestselling book entitled Demystifying Esports: A Personal Guide to the History and Future of Competitive Gaming.

Nyle Sky Kauweloa is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii’s Communication and Information Sciences program. Broadly, his research interests are at the intersection of technology, society, and gaming. His dissertation work is an ethnographic study of the still-emerging scene of college esports in the United States, which included his doing fieldwork at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent writing on esports is a book chapter (“The Emergence of College Esports in North America”) for Global esports: Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of Competitive Gaming (2021). Outside of research, Mr. Kauweloa serves on the board of the Electronic Gaming Federation (a collection of 40 Division-1 colleges with esports programmatic investments), and the newly launched VOICE, a non-profit of college esports leadership in higher education.

Mr. Timothy Shen is the Founder and Investor of Yesports Media Limited. Yesports headquartered in HK, is a global group for the development of sports (especially esports), technology (especially AI) and related talents/ professionals career development and management.

Yesports provides a global “esports +” social media hub showcasing talents from around the world, encouraging talents to share their gaming experience and unleash their talent, and providing a network for connecting to the corporates, media and sponsors for sponsorships, media exposure and marketing synergies. Yesports has held over 300 online and offline events globally covering 50 plus countries and markets, with 100+million social media impressions, and 600million viewership reach. Latest series of events including the GIRLS’ POWER ESPORTS TOURNAMENT which is the embodiment of the women rights to improve their career development, YESPORTS SUMMER INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL MUSIC FIESTA, YESPORTS DANCE BATTLE, hosted throughout the lockdown of various countries in the past year, have already achieved an average of 15 million+ online reach audiences.

In addition, Mr. Shen is the Chairman of Huge Famous Group and Safari Asia Limited. He has over 20 years of extensive experience in the accounting, corporate finance, investments, M&A and restructuring advisory areas with companies such as Merrill Lynch, and he also served as the management of listed companies in London and Hong Kong markets.

Dr Yupei Zhao (PhD in University of Leicester, UK) is an “Hundred Talent Program Young Professor” and doctorial tutor in college of Media and International Culture in Zhejiang University. She is currently vice chair-elected of International Communication Association Popular Media and Culture Division, vice dean of Chinese Society for Science and Technology Jounalism in Game and eSports Communication Research Professionals. Co-founder of UK-China Media and Communication Association. Before joining ZJU, she was working as a senior research associate in school of Communciation and Design in Sun Yat-sen University. Meanwhile, Yupei Zhao has been invited as senior researcher in Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies, China Policy institute at University of Nottingham (UK), and the Eurasian Sport Industry at Emlyon’s Shanghai Campus, visiting professor in Xi’an-Liverpool University and Beijing Institute of Technology.

Her research interests widely includes mixed-methods use to examine digital culture and platformalization, global communication, media culture and industry. Particurly, she pays more attentions on eSports culture and industry, digital music and culture, fandom culture, media and platformalization. She has a PhD and MA focusing on Political Communication and New Media in University of Leicester (UK) since 2010 to 2016. Thus far, she is PI for twelve research funding projects, and her research has appeared in International Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Cultural Economy, International Journal of Communication, Social Science Quarterly, Sage Open, Social media + Society, Media International Australia, popular music and society etc. She got “The Best Paper” Paper Award in both 2020 and 2019 International Communication Association Popular Media and Culture Division, and 2019 European Association for Sport Management.

Ir. Chan is in charge of building the start-up ecosystem at Cyberport from inspiring the next generation, throughnnurturing the entrepreneurial spirit, to empowering global ambition, by providing comprehensive entrepreneurship programmes, funding support and partnership networks.

Ir. Chan has over 30 years’ experience in the ICT and technology industry, a chartered engineer, a chartered marketer and a Fellow of Institution of Engineering & Technology (UK). Prior to joining Cyberport, Chan had held various senior positions in global telecom and IT services companies. Ir. Chan has been active in public services including education, industrial training, professional bodies and charitable organisations, and is currently Chairman of Knowledge Management Development Center.

Ir. Chan holds a BSc. (Hon) degree in Engineering from University of London, a Master degree in Business Administration from Manchester Business School, and received Senior Executive Education from INSEAD (France) and IESE (Spain) business schools.

Prof Peichi Chung received her Ph.D. from the Department of Telecommunication, Indiana University-Bloomington. Her teaching and research interests include new media and digital culture. In her teaching, she focuses on new development in media cultural studies. She examines issues related to new media production and cultural policy in sub-regional locations within Asia. Her research focuses on media industry analysis at both corporation and government levels. Along with her previous projects, her current works include cultural preservation of Hong Kong in video game. Her co-edited book, Media Technologies for Work and Place in East Asia: Critical Perspectives toward Japan and the Two Koreas, was published by Bristol University Press in 2021.

Author of, “The rise of the wildlife gamer: How game experiences can influence the future of conservation interest” report.

Maike Gericke is Co-Founder of innovation studio Scrypt and Co-Founder and CEO Tiramisu, a “social network of kindness” that optimizes interactions for wellbeing and impact. She applies her lessons and insights from a decade of corporate and start-up work to create new impactful solutions at the intersection of technology innovation, human-centred design, and social/ environmental impact.

In a recent project with Internet of Elephants and the Luc Hoffmann Institute, she looked into the role that games and gamification can play in wildlife conservation, creating new insightsinto the market of wildlife-interested gamers.

Jim Huntley is a Marketing and Brand Management Executive with over 25 years of experience leading teams across multiple industries. After graduating from Northwestern University’s Masters of Marketing Communications program, he joined General Mills where he managed marketing and promotions on Betty Crocker Products, Lucky Charms, and Cheerios. He followed that with a stint at Nestle before transitioning into the toy industry and spending 4 years at Mattel, working on brands as varied as Hot Wheels, Barbie, He-Man, Max Steel, and Justice League. His success on Barbie brought him to MGA to work as their VP of marketing on their Bratz line, then transitioned into video games by taking a role at THQ. In his almost 5 years there, he served as Marketing VP on their kids products (SpongeBob, Disney’s Cars, Wall-E), and T/M rated titles like MX vs ATV, Space Marine, Homefront, UFC 2010, WWE, and Darksiders 1 & 2. He most recently relaunched the SodaStream brand in the US with a business transforming TV spot that is now being used globally, and is currently consulting for a variety of companies in the toy, consumer products, and gaming industries. He is also a Professor in the USC Games program at the University of Southern California.

Ms. Jackie Agnello Wong is the APRU Director, Network and Student Programs. With over 20 years of working in the higher education sector and policy, Wong is dedicated to informing international public policy making through education, research, and partnership. Prior to joining the APRU Secretariat, she launched the first-ever Global Master of Public Policy, a joint executive degree with The University of Hong Kong and the University of Southern California as the Director for Marketing and Recruitment. Prior to this role she served at the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII), research centers at the University of Southern California. She has a Master of Public Administration from University of Southern California and holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.