Countries and cities around the globe are faced with increasingly complex social challenges. The difficulty in solving them is aggravated by polarization, misinformation, and people’s distrust in leaders. We’ll look at how some changemakers in Asia are turning that around by fostering citizens’ engagement in the design of public services and problem-solving. What made such unlikely co-creation possible in the Asian context? How is the citizen-government relationship redefined in the process? Social innovators from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea will share their successes and challenges of navigating between decision makers and the public to innovate for a more inclusive and effective public square.
This session was curated in partnership with Good Lab.
Warren serves as CEO of Good Lab, a non-profit social innovation consultancy dedicated to enabling social and public sector organisations in Hong Kong to become innovative in addressing social and organisational issues through cross-sector collaboration and Design Thinking.
Committed to public service, Warren is a member of the Advisory Committee on Enhancing Self-Reliance Through District Partnership Programme under the Home Affairs Department. The programme aims to promote sustainable poverty prevention and alleviation efforts to strengthen the self-reliance of socially disadvantaged groups through seed grants and advisory for social enterprises in Hong Kong. Besides, he is also a member of the Lantau Conservation Fund Advisory Committee under the Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD).
Prior to joining Good Lab, Warren was a Manager within the Strategy & Operations practice of Deloitte Consulting in Hong Kong, the UK and US, with a focus on the financial services industry. He has a broad range of management consulting experience advising global and domestic financial institutions – from formulating go-to-market strategies and target operating models to delivering large-scale business transformation programmes.
Warren holds a bachelor's degree in Economics and Statistics from UCL with a concentration on public and development economics. In addition, he is a LUMA Institute certified practitioner of human-centred design and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
Sunkyung HAN is the founder and CEO of C., a social innovation catalyst organization. Since its establishment (2004), C. works in Asia to create the spaces for exchange and connections among people and organisations and to contribute to the systemic transition through creating the sense making platform. C. facilitate the connections and knowledges and create the conversation inclusively so help people to understand the system and to change the behaviour and take the collective action for systemic change. Its works ranges from organising the festival and creating the community for inclusive transition to designing the fellowship and capacity building program in social innovation with governments, foundations and intermediaries.
With more than 13 years experience as connectors in social innovation, she help the individuals and organizations in all sectors to be connected. She worked as advisor and sit in several committees of Seoul Metropolitan Government in social innovation and worked as a korea advisor for AVPN, the leading ecosystem builder of social investing in Asia.
She is also a board member of YouthVoice, local Non Profit Organization to help the youth to express their own voice through media for the last 18 years and a board member of Seoul Social Economy Network, the networks of network of social economy based in Seoul.
Deputy Executive Director, DesignSingapore Council
Emily has more than 25 years of professional experience spanning the arts, media, design and infocomm in the private and public sectors. She started her career in advertising and marketing with Miller Freeman Pte Ltd and Singapore Press Holdings Ltd in the media sector. Emily later made a switch to the Singapore Public Service, starting out as an arts and heritage policy officer at the Ministry of Information and the Arts. Since then, she has been posted to various divisions within the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, followed by stints in the Economic Development Board, Media Development Authority, Ministry of Communications and Information and now with the DesignSingapore Council. Emily spearheads policies and initiatives, as well as works with companies, schools, professional bodies and individuals to grow the arts, media, design and infocomm sectors in Singapore. During this time, Emily has been involved in formulating and developing major masterplans such as the Arts & Culture Strategic Plan, Infocomm Media 2025 and Design 2025 Masterplan. Emily holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (National University of Singapore), a Master of Business Administration (University of Western Australia) and completed the Innovation by Design Executive Programme at INSEAD Asia. Emily is currently pursuing her Master of Design (Design Strategies) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Ada Y K WONG, JP
Executive Chair, Good Lab Foundation
Director, Ednovators
Chairperson, Make A Difference Institute
Ada has led a varied career as solicitor, creative educator, cultural entrepreneur, social innovator, civil society advocate and local politician. She has set up and run many non-profit institutions in the education, culture, creativity and social innovation fields in the past 20 years.
She founded Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture (HKICC) to advocate education innovation in 1998. Since 2006, HKICC founded the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, a unique senior secondary school dedicated to nurturing talents for arts and cultural innovation, and Ada is the school's Supervisor.
In 2010, she co-founded the Make A Difference (MaD) initiative (www.mad.asia), a creativity for good platform for young changemakers in Asia. In the last 11 years, MaD has undertaken projects at the intersection of creativity and urban/social challenges, incubated social startups, and has worked with cross sector changemakers to come up with bottom-up innovative solutions.
In 2012 Ada founded The Good Lab (www.goodlab.hk), a social innovation co-working space and hub, which later became a do tank and innovation consultancy to enable tri-sector collaborations for positive changes in society. Since 2016, in her capacity as a Director of Ednovators, Ada designed and led the Innopower Teacher Fellowship (jcinnopower.hk), a programme to build the innovation capacity of teachers in Hong Kong.
Ada was an elected member of the Urban Council and Wan Chai District Council between 1995 and 2008 with the last four years as Chairperson of the Wan Chai District Council. She received her BA (Hons) from Pomona College, California USA, and M Ed from the University of Hong Kong. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lingnan University, Hong Kong Education University and the Hong Kong Baptist University.
