IWD 2022 Inclusive Workplaces: The Key to A Sustainable Tomorrow

Yee May Leong is responsible for leading the company’s business strategy in South Asia. She focuses on facilitating digital transformation of businesses to support the government’s plan to establish Singapore as the digital hub in Asia and helping global multinational companies execute their digital strategy in Asia-Pacific and globally. 

During her tenure, Yee May has led the team to expand Platform Equinix in Singapore and drive sustainability strategy. As a diversity, inclusion and belonging ally and a global executive sponsor of WeAreEquinix, a company-wide initiative to create a place where our employees can say “I’m safe, I belong and I matter,” she supports equality and underrepresented groups within the company and the local community. 

Yee May joined Equinix in 2019 with more than 35 years of ICT experience across Asia-Pacific at leading technology companies, including IBM, Lotus, F5 Networks and Orange Business Services. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, with a major in computer science and a minor in management studies, from the University of Waterloo in Canada. She also completed the advanced management program at Harvard Business School. 

Angielina Tay is a strategic Talent Business Partner with more than 10 years of recruitment experience in both Industrial and Technology industries. Angie is a trusted consulting talent advisor to her business leaders and is passionate in social hiring and a strong advocate in diversity hiring.  

Angie is fluent in English and Mandarin with personal experience living and working in Australia, China, Singapore and Malaysia.  

Imane is Microsoft Singapore’s Country Head of Customer Success. As a leader who has lived and worked in Japan, France, Morocco, and Singapore, Imane’s inspiration to innovate stems from her deep cultural integration and diverse and inclusive approach to people across different business functions. 

Through her passion for diversity and inclusion, Imane continues to deliver impact on the community by embracing diversity and creating a true sense of belonging for everyone beyond gender, race, ethnicity or religion. 

Imane endeavours to advocate and empower women in technology by inspiring young female talents across Asia, encouraging them to embrace innovative thinking grounded in trust, inclusivity and meaning. 

She graduated from Tohoku University in Japan with a master’s degree in Electrical and Communication Engineering. 

Author, Industry Speaker, Changemaker, Making Gender Diversity an Actionable Priority  

Duncan Hewett is the author of ‘Accelerating Women’, a new book on actionable ways of creating a diverse workplace, published by Penguin Randomhouse. Duncan has been an industry champion for the representation of women in business and technology throughout his 35 years in the IT Industry. During his more than 5 years of leading VMware for Asia Pacific & Japan, Duncan created and sponsored VMinclusion Taara, a world leading program that helps women upskill and regain the confidence to return to work in the India technology sector. To date more than 3,600 women have rejoined the workforce and over 16,000 women have and are benefiting from participating in the program. The program is now expanding across Asia Pacific with even greater goals to help many more women rejoin the workforce. This program has been awarded by 'Women Leading Change Awards 2020 for Asia Pacific', India's reputed Economic Times' ET Now - CSR Program of the Year 2019, JobsForHer's - Top 20 Most Innovative Practices Women Returnee Programs and Zinnov VMware India's Inclusion & Diversity Award.  

Throughout his leadership roles in IBM, Lotus and VMware, Duncan has been focused on driving actionable results for gender diversity in the workplace and has consistently driven acceleration for women across leadership levels. Duncan’s goal is to now expand the knowledge of the best practices to help more managers and leaders accelerate the growth and innovation of their organisation by working with the biggest under-utilised talent pool available, women. He has been personally recognized by SpeakIn as a Leader in Diversity & Inclusion 2022, and in the Top 50 Leading Lights for Kindness & Leadership 2021.  

Duncan's belief is diversity leads to sustained growth and innovation, but it requires a much more integrated approach of organisations, more specifically its managers and leaders to support women. This amazing talent pool of women supported with the right tools and techniques delivers exceptional contribution to every organisation. However, managers and leaders are not doing enough to help with skills, mentoring or creating Trusted spaces to allow them to contribute to their potential. His vision for the workplace is to be representative of society, which is 50:50 participation. As he says, "If it is not, we have work to do."  

Sabrina Ho is the Founder and CEO of half the sky - Asia’s leading career platform for women. She is on a mission to provide every woman the tools to build a successful career and navigate the future of work. 

After more than a decade working in the recruitment industry across the Asia Pacific, Sabrina witnessed first-hand the discriminatory practices that women face in their careers. In 2019, Sabrina bit the bullet and founded Half The Sky (HTS) to level the playing field for women at work and help companies build a more diverse workforce for the future of work. Half the sky has jobs across various industries in more than 14 countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Australia, NZ, India, Greater China and works with the leading Fortune 500 companies like J.P. Morgan, DBS Bank, Cisco, Equinix, DuPont, IBM and Johnson Controls. 

Born in Hong Kong and residing in Singapore for over a decade, she is a sought-after speaker on diversity, future of work and leadership and she has been interviewed and featured on Linkedin, Channel News Asia, MONEY FM 89.3, Singapore Tatler, ICON, The Peak, Singapore Women’s Weekly Magazine, ELLE Magazine, The New Paper, Prestige, Robb Report and Buro.Singapore and she is also a contributor for several leading media outlets on gender diversity and future of work topic.