Donovan Rypkema is president of Heritage Strategies International and principal of PlaceEconomics. The firms undertake assignments at the nexus of heritage and economics. Rypkema has worked in 52 countries and 49 US States. He teaches heritage economics at the University of Pennsylvania where he received the G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching. 

Rypkema holds a Masters degree in Historic Preservation from Columbia University. He has authored numerous articles, publications, and book chapters on heritage economics including in The Economics of Uniqueness, Heritage as an Asset for Inner-City Development, Heritage and Beyond and Reconnecting the City: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach. Rypkema’s book, The Economics of Historic Preservation: A Community Leader’s Guide has been translated into Russian, Georgian, and Korean.

Clients have included the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Council of Europe and UNDP. He is a member of the UN Economic Commission for Europe Real Estate Market Advisory Group, the Board of Directors of Global Urban Development, and the ICOMOS ISC on the Economics of Conservation.

In 2012 Rypkema received the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award from the US National Trust for lifetime contribution to historic preservation. In 2019 he was a Visiting Fellow for the Centre for Livable Cities in Singapore.

Kyros Shirazi is Managing Director and Co-Founder of Lapidary, a Hong Kong-based investment firm focused on for-profit, socially impactful early-stage companies in Asia. Lapidary’s founding thesis believes that private capital can be effectively harnessed to address key social issues in Asia and beyond.

Prior to founding Lapidary, Kyros’ professional experience includes 13+ years of extensive financial institutions focused on investment banking work at various banks in London, New York, and San Francisco. During his investment banking career, Kyros developed significant experience across a wide spectrum of financial services sectors, with a specific emphasis on balance sheet-driven businesses, such as depositories and specialty lenders. He possesses an extensive track record in executing and closing strategic advisory/capital raising transactions for public and private corporates and financial sponsors. Kyros’ move into entrepreneurial finance with Lapidary combines his corporate finance and investment banking background with his belief in values-aligned investing and sustainability as well as his desire to work with inspiring entrepreneurs on an ongoing basis. With Lapidary, Kyros enjoys incubating new and exciting business ideas in social innovation that take the firm’s impact mandate to the next level.

Kyros received his B.S. degree in Economics with a concentration in Finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Graham Marshall is a seasoned property professional with qualifications in architecture, economics, and finance and extensive experience in residential development -with recent significant experience in social and affordable housing has led a team that has over the last three years acquired a $200m portfolio of affordable housing that on completion of construction will be rented to moderate- and low-income households.

He has held executive leadership roles including 10 years as General Manager of a major public development company in Australia where he has led teams to deliver all aspects of development including acquisition, procurement, planning and design, product specifications, budgeting, scheduling, quality control, contract management and reporting on progress and performance.

He has been successful in delivering residential programs totaling several thousand properties in broad-hectare land developments, house and land, townhouse villages, and apartments/mixed-use developments, adding to his experience in commercial and retail property development and infrastructure projects.

He was a founding member of the National Board of EnviroDevelopment® which has provided third-party independent certification of 145 projects through the scientifically based sustainability tool, encompassing water, energy, materials, waste community, and ecosystems. He has recently retired as Trustee for the Queensland Trust for Nature after 14 years, preserving over 100,000ha of the State’s natural heritage during his term and protecting habitat for some of the planet’s most threatened species. He has received numerous industry awards most notably a Distinguished Service Award to the Urban Development Institute of Australia and the Prime Minister’s Award for a major environmental project.

Since 2018 he has supported Doh Eain contributing to investment and financial modeling and risk analysis and on the advisory board.

Geoff Rich RIBA AABC is an Architect and Managing Partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.  Having completed his architectural studies at the University of Newcastle, Geoff joined FCBS in 1996 and takes a leading role in the practice’s creative re-use and regeneration work.  He is a former SPAB Lethaby Scholar and an accredited conservation architect with both the AABC and the RIBA schemes. His projects include the repair and regeneration of the oldest surviving iron-framed buildings in the world at Shrewsbury Flax Mill Maltings for Historic England and the major repair and renovation of Bath Abbey. Previous projects include: Middleport Pottery, Windsor Castle, National Museums Liverpool, Westminster School, Hampton Court Palace, Roman Baths in Bath, National Museums of Ireland, Tourist Burma Building (Yangon), Umm Qais (Jordan), and the Southbank Centre. Geoff is a Design Council CABE Built Environment Expert, a member of Historic England’s Historic Places Panel, and Chairman of the Fabric Advisory Council for Exeter Cathedral.  He is a visiting lecturer on conservation and sustainability at several universities and leads external examiner at the University of the West of England.  He is a guest lecturer on sustainable development for the Commonwealth Architects Association.  When he’s not at work he rides his bike a lot.

Dutch urban planner Ester van Steekelenburg is the co-founder of social enterprise Urban Discovery. From their basecamp in Hong Kong this small team works with governments, developers and NGOs across Asia to build the business case for heritage revitalisation. They also operate iDiscover, a digital app & map platform that enables communities to map what matters in their own neighbourhood. Before it’s too late… 

Ye Myat Min started coding and building at 12. He started his entrepreneurship journey during his university days in Singapore. He co-founded a social video startup before Instagram had any video feed. He then went back to Myanmar in 2013 to start a digital consultancy which became top 5 consultancies; employing more than 100 employees. In 2019, he co-founded a SaaS startup in the HR and Payroll space serving businesses in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Ye Myat has a decade of experience in building companies, building teams, fund-raising, and more.

Mr. Martyn Sawyer joined the group in 1985 as Assistant Manager of Peninsula Clubs and Consultancy Services and was appointed as Group General Manager, Properties and Clubs in 1999. As the Group Director, Properties, he is responsible for the group’s non-hotel properties and operations including The Repulse Bay Complex and The Peak Complex in Hong Kong, as well as management of the group’s properties and clubs in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Shanghai, and France. Mr. Sawyer also oversees the group’s investment in Yangon. He is a Director of a number of the group’s entities.

Melani Oliver is a freelance consultant with considerable national and international experience in organizational development, leadership, and coaching. She holds qualifications in Leadership and Coaching and has many years of successful experience working with organizations helping them to identify and achieve their goals and dreams She is especially interested in working with people and communities to enable them to inform, shape, and develop the world they live in.
As former UK Director of Innovation in Local Government for NESTA, she led a portfolio of experimental programs that developed and tested methods for radically transforming services through innovation and human-centered design. In addition, she designed and ran a UK national program "Design in Public Services" for the Design Council. 

Melani started her career as a family social worker and worked for 22 years in Local Government at a senior executive level in Children and Education Services. In 2016 Melani moved to Myanmar to work as a volunteer organizational development advisor, providing local civil society organizations with coaching and management support to develop their skills to be able to advocate for democracy. She returned to the UK in May 2019 and continues to combine her passion for challenging inequality and injustice through her work with Education and Children Services in the UK and with organizations in Iraq and Myanmar. In addition, Melani is a first response international volunteer for Shelterbox, providing first boots on the ground in emergencies.

Jia-Ping is passionate about seeding hope in people and places. Over the years she has been able to incorporate her varied experiences in theatre, the arts, branding, and place strategy to rejuvenate urban and corporate places, and hospitals. Her main purpose is to increase economic vibrancy through a series of economic, social and cultural interventions that will ultimately attract and retain businesses, communities and talent. 

As the former Programme Director at Think City, a govt-linked urban rejuvenation ‘think and do’ tank (under Khazanah Nasional), she drove the rejuvenation of the heritage core of Kuala Lumpur and introduced an entrepreneur matching grant to the Think City Grants Programme which was adopted for four cities in Malaysia. Using her theatre training and love of the arts, she spearheaded Arts on the Move, KL’s longest-running visual and performing arts programme in an LRT station to generate excitement within the social media community ultimately leading to increase participation in the heritage core.

One of her proudest achievements was fostering and enabling Kebun Kebun Bangsar, a community farm and urban oasis under a stretch of electricity pylons.  This was a joint project in collaboration with Ng Seksan, KL City Hall and Think City. After three years, the Kebun is sustainable, self-funding and helps not only to provide a green refuge for a community recovering from multiple pandemic lockdowns but also provides fresh produce to homeless kitchens and orphanages.

Her role in Think City saw her actively growing the placemaking movement in the region culminating in the first-ever Placemaker Week ASEAN 2019. In the same year, she was made Founding Senior Advisor and Regional Network Leader (Asia) of PlacemakingX (based in New York) and subsequently appointed as a member of the Start-Up Board in 2020. In 2021 Jia-Ping became the founding Chairperson of Placemaking Malaysia, under the auspices of the Malaysian Institute of Planners where she continues to drive and grow the placemaking movement in Malaysia as well as the region.

Jia-Ping has also helped many brands find their purpose as well as create a culture that grows and retains talent. She worked with See Hoy Chan on their brand which laid the foundation for the transformation of their culture, as well as guided the design and the HR strategy to ready them for the Uptown area transformation and the development of The Starling. Other brands she has worked with include MAGIC, Roti Boy, Zain & Co and George Town Penang. She is currently working with one of the largest Malaysian government agencies in aligning departmental strategy with overall corporate strategy.

Jia-Ping spent 5 years as a brand coach on bfm89.9’s Up the Ante programme and has been a guest lecturer at Sunway College. She speaks regularly at CEO events and was a Keynote Speaker at the 2019 Detroit Convention, organised by the Michigan Municipal League.