Speakers

Ben Tsiang CEO and Co-Founder, CNEX Former Co-Founder, SINA	Steven Schwankert Founder, SinoScuba	Ines Brunn Founder and CEO, Natooke Advisor, Greening the Beige

Stefen Chow Photographer, Mountaineer NIKON Professional 2009	Kaiser Kuo Writer, Columnist Rock Musician	Kristie Lu Stout CNN International Anchor and Correspondent Founding Member, Sohu

Elyse Ribbons Founder, Cheeky Monkey Theater	Hung Huang CEO, China Interactive Media Publisher and Editor, iLook Magazine	Yan Zhang CEO and Co-Founder Meiloo

Rania Ho Artist, Co-Founder, Arrow Factory	Dominic Johnson Hill Founder, Creative Director, Plastered T-Shirts

Speaker biographies:

• Ben Tsiang is the co-founder and CEO of CNEX, a 3-year-old social enterprise with the mission of making 100 documentary films in 10 years about contemporary Chinese society. The films he produced in the past 2 years have been widely nominated in 35 international film festivals, and the current work 1428, a documentary film about the Sichuan Earthquake in China, just won the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti, The Best Documentary Film Prize, this year. Previously, he was one of the co-founders of SINA.com.
• Steven Schwankert is founder of SinoScuba, Beijing’s first professional scuba diving operator, and a member of The Explorers Club. In 2007, he led the first-ever scientific expedition to dive Mongolia’s Lake Khovsgol. His book on a groundbreaking China maritime discovery, The Real Poseidon Adventure, will be published in 2010.
• Stefen Chow is a photographer and mountaineer. Stefen summitted Mount Everest in 2005, becoming one of the rare individuals to document the journey. His works have been published and awarded internationally, and was named a ‘Nikon Professional’ in 2009. Stefen is currently working on a fine art project, ‘Imperial Awakening’ surrounding the dialogue between China’s royal history in today’s world. The series will be showcased at the Photo Miami and Photo Los Angeles in late 2009.
• Kaiser Kuo is a writer, rock musician, and culture/technology commentator. He previously worked as Director of Digital Strategy, China, for Ogilvy, as China Bureau Chief for Red Herring magazine, and as a freelance reporter. He is the author of Ich Bin Ein Beijinger, an anthology of columns written for that’s Beijing/The Beijinger magazine since 2001. A 15-year Beijing resident, he was co-founder of China’s first and most successful heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty, and remains active in the rock scene in Beijing as lead guitarist for Mandarin metal band Chunqiu.
• Kristie Lu Stout is an award winning anchor/correspondent for CNN International. Recently named one of Forbes magazine’s ‘Nine Women to Watch’ in Asia, and winner of a prestigious Asian Television Award as “Best news presenter or anchor”, Stout hosts the evening edition of the network’s “World Report” news program from CNN’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. She has conducted in-depth interviews with some of technology’s biggest newsmakers including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. She was one of the first employees to join the Beijing-based Internet portal Sohu.com and worked for Reuters’ new media division in China.
• Elyse Ribbons is a playwright, actress, blogger, director and radio host. Born in Detroit Michigan, raised in North Carolina and a Beijing resident for the past 7+ years, she is the founder of Cheeky Monkey Theater, which has produced five plays and created the ShiFen Theater Festival; As one of the hosts of CRI’s Mandarin-language program “Laowai Kandian” she enjoys the challenge of explaining the American perspective while carefully avoiding any of the words on the censored list. Her contribution to a harmonious society is mainly in the form of comedic plays that embraces stereotypes and proceeds to mock them. In her spare time, she organizes ChocoJing, Beijing’s Chocolate Appreciation Society.
• Hung Huang is currently the CEO of China Interactive Media Group, a publishing company that prints iLook, a lifestyle magazine targeting China’s middle and upper classes. She serves as the Publisher and Editor of the iLook Magazine. Her company previously published the Chinese editions of Seventeen and Time Out Beijing. She also hosts a late night TV program on Travel TV. During the Cultural Revolution Hung was sent to the Little Red School House in New York. She later attended Vassar. Hung has written 3 books and used to write for Economix about how Chinese culture is adapting to a rapidly changing economy. She also pens a popular personal blog (in Chinese). She co-wrote and starred in the 2005 independent film Perpetual Motion.
• Ines Brunn is a German physicist and passionate cyclist that lived in the USA for 6 years. She was a researcher at a particle accelerator, then moved to the telecommunication industry and relocated to Beijing in 2004. She was a competitive athlete for over 20 years, on the German National Team of indoor cycling for 10 years and still performs around the world. In 2007, fueled by her passion, Ines and a friend initiated the steadily growing community of fixed gear bicyclists in Beijing. Ines founded Natooke – the first fixed gear bike and juggling shop in China. She is advisor of Greening the Beige, an eco-minded arts collective to connect and build synergies between environmental organizations and green individuals in Beijing. Ines aims to build awareness for bicycling in China as a sport, hobby and daily transportation method to help minimize carbon emissions. With her cycling she has been on TV in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Singapore and of course in China (CCTV3, CCTV9, TianjinTV).

• Yan Zhang is the CEO and co-founder of Meiloo.com, an Internet start-up that helps people find and choose elective health care services in China. Meiloo was founded in 2007 and has been featured in CNN, Forbes Asia, Men’s Health China, TechCrunch and other domestic and international publications. Prior, Yan was the Chief Representative of Random House, Inc., the world’s largest general interest book publisher, in China. Yan was born in China, and grew up in Nanjing, Abu Dhabi, and San Diego. As of 2009, Yan has spent exactly half of his life in China and half abroad. Yan graduated from Princeton University with a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
• Rania Ho is a practicing artist, a former member of Complete Art Experience Project (CAEP), and one of the founding members of the performance art band, The Contractors. Rania has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout China and the United States. A former Interval Research Fellow and visiting scholar at Microsoft Research Asia’s Center for Interaction Design in Beijing, she received her M.A. from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. She has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout China, Asia, Europe and the United States. Recent projects include residencies at ZAIM in Yokohama, Japan (2009) and Ssamzie Space in Seoul, Korea (2007); Timestamp: Solo exhibition at Long March Project Space (2006), ISEA2006/Zero One Festival, San Jose (2006), Beyond – the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial (2005), and Playgrounds of Authorship at the University of Rochester, NY (2005). She is one of the co-founders of the Beijing storefront art space Arrow Factory.
• Dominic Johnson-Hill is the founder and creative dictator of Plastered T-shirts, Beijing’s first, original t-shirt brand. The now-famous clothing brand takes iconic imagery from China’s streets and celebrates it. Dominic arrived in Beijing in 1993 as a backpacker and then in 1995 setup his first business providing market research for foreign companies in China during which time he travelled to almost every major city in China. In 2006 Dominic started Plastered T-shirts on a then very quiet hutong (alleyway) called Nan Luo Gu Xiang. Plastered T-shirts now sells out of 12 locations worldwide. Dominic was the recipient of the 2008 British Entrepreneur of the Year in China award. Dominic lives behind the Plastered T-shirts Flagship store with his wife and three children.