Leaders in Motion - How Global Executives Reinvent Leadership in the Age of AI and Market Disruption

"There is no way you can micromanage anyone in China — and certainly not from ten thousand kilometers away." Most Western companies expanding into APAC build one regional strategy and apply it across the board. One pipeline. One dashboard. One assumption about what it means to operate in Asia. The region keeps proving that assumption wrong — expensively. In this episode, Kevin Hong speaks with Ced...

"The problem is not that Chinese teams resist change. The problem is that leaders arrive with a fixed model of what leadership looks like — and mistake cultural difference for underperformance." Cross-border executive placements rarely fail because someone lacks the skill. They fail in the integration — how authority is read, how conflict is handled, how feedback lands, and what alignment really m...

"The problem is not bad leaders in China. The problem is a Western-led governance model that confuses uniformity with discipline, historical revenue with future potential, and center-driven control with strategic relevance." For years, European headquarters have blamed their China underperformance on local leadership. In this solo episode, Kevin draws on conversations with a dozen of executives wh...

"We needed to slow down to keep the identity of the brand." Piet Kolsch is a Swiss-based retail operator and brand transformation leader with 25 years of experience building, opening, and scaling flagship environments across Europe and beyond — from GAP and Esprit to Apple, Tally Weijl, Benetton, Patagonia, and Steinway. Piet's journey begins in Munich with GAP's record-breaking flagship opening i...

“One Spanish listen…is equal to at least 10 listens because people listen with their friends.” Lory Martinez, Colombian-American brand strategist and founder of Maraviya in Paris, has spent the last two decades building multilingual story ecosystems—then translating that operating system into brand strategy for cross-border founders. Lory's journey runs from early radio journalism and engineering...

"We could see the SaaS apocalypse coming five years before it came." Ian Hogg is Chairman of SolvedBy.ai and ShopWorks. He partners with SaaS leadership teams to embed practical, vertical AI engines into their products — not generic copilots, but AI built for specific operational contexts like workforce scheduling, demand forecasting, and labour efficiency. For any executive navigating software ve...

"The truth is that if the sales system that supports go-to-market is broken, the go-to-market strategy is not going to work." Romka, Managing Director of GrowWise Solutions, she helps founders and CEOs architect their revenue engines for maximum year-over-year growth. Based in Singapore, Romka works across SME, mid-market, and enterprise organizations — and consistently sees the same blind spot at...

“You cannot know China until you live in China.” Sonia Benjelloun-Carpentier, Managing Director of Piaget China, has spent two decades across hard luxury—from Tag Heuer to De Beers, Cartier, Bulgari, and now Piaget—leading brands through complex markets where culture, consumer psychology, and timing decide everything. Sonia’s career arc is a study in mobility and reinvention: born and raised in Mo...

“AI will become like internet. Everyone in every business will have to use AI just like the way we use electricity or we use water. It will become a utility.” Karthik Tirupathi, CEO and senior board executive in Healthcare IT, shares an operator’s view on how leaders can navigate disruption across markets and technology cycles. Karthik’s journey runs from early enterprise tech (including SAP and H...

“ China is a fast train — and if you step off, you risk becoming obsolete. ” Laurent Scarato, a French manufacturing executive who has spent nearly two decades building and transforming industrial operations across China, on why long-term relevance in industry increasingly depends on how quickly you can learn, adapt, and execute in the world’s most demanding operating environment. Laurent’s path i...

“ Execution is where most change programs die. ” Yvan Gilliard, a transformation and operations leader who has spent 17 years building (and rebuilding) the systems that make large organizations run, on what separates strategy-on-paper from operational change that actually survives contact with reality. Yvan’s career is a rare blend of consulting rigor and operator instincts: starting in supply cha...

“ Leadership is making clarity out of complexity. ” Francesco Pesci, a luxury executive with 30+ years of experience across Italy, France, Denmark, and Japan, joins Kevin Hong to unpack what it takes to lead across cultures, turn around heritage brands, and build organizations that can win internationally without forcing one leadership style everywhere. Francesco’s career spans Brioni (including i...

“ China is not difficult to understand — it is difficult to lead in if you try to run it on titles and slide decks instead of trust, relationships, and speed. ” — Dr. Guido Maune, Managing Director of Maersk Container Industry in Qingdao, on why Western companies keep misreading China: not because the market is “hard,” but because relationships, speed, and customer-first execution matter more than...

“ China is not just the biggest auto market. It is where the industry’s pace, consumer expectations, and innovation frontier are being reset .” In this episode of Leaders in Motion , Kevin Hong sits down with Pierluigi Visotti , Managing Director and Founder of Ulysses , to unpack what China’s automotive acceleration means for Western OEMs, and what cross-border leadership really requires when the...

“𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁.” Jenny Lai, President & CEO for Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau at Bluebell Group, a platform that helps luxury and lifestyle brands enter, scale, and perform across Asia, on the most persistent misunderstanding global HQ teams bring into the China luxury conversation — and why “China” is never one consumer, one city, or one playbook. Jenny’s car...

In this solo episode, Kevin Hong shares key insights on why Chinese New Year creates so much friction inside international companies — and what strong China leaders do differently. CNY is not just “seven days off.” Operational work slows down. But relationship work accelerates. That gap is where most HQ misunderstandings start: HQ either keeps pushing (and mistakes responses for consent), or goes...

"I just want to build a company like Google. That was very naive. But that was my passion." Google engineer turned founder Sega Cheng on what happens when you leave the Valley to build an AI startup in Asia — and why the hardest part of the journey was not learning new skills but unlearning the DNA of deterministic code to lead with probabilistic uncertainty. Based in Taiwan , Sega spent six years...

In this solo episode, Kevin hong share key insights from our executive webinar on sales hiring in founder-led businesses, featuring Yining Wang (serial entrepreneur who took a company public in two years) and Christian Schneider (CEO of File AI, a Series B enterprise SaaS company). Their experiences reveal three critical insights that most founders miss: the environment mismatch between establishe...

"AI can mimic our voice, but it cannot capture our vision." Burson WPP senior director Kaveri Roy on what happens when marketing agencies navigate the collision of artificial intelligence, cultural nuance, and global storytelling — and why "localization" is no longer about translation, but about co-creating with context to build campaigns that resonate across India, APAC, and beyond. Based in Mumb...

“ In China, three-month-old insight can already be outdated. ” Kantar advisory partner Ye Han on what brand strategy really looks like when the market moves faster than your planning cycles — and why “brand excellence” is no longer a marketing function, but a company-wide operating system that links strategy, product, experience, and people. Based in Beijing , Ye Han has spent two decades helping...

“ Online? Offline? They cannot be separate — consumers don’t care where they buy. ” Omnichannel operator Loïc Réthore on why most transformations fail when they start with tech instead of vision, people, and governance —and how strong operating discipline stops channels from competing with each other and starts protecting margin and customer experience. From building brands across APAC (Japan, Gre...

Autonomy isn’t independence — you earn freedom by serving the brand.” Luxury beauty leader Guilhem Souche on why the best global-to-local leaders win trust by delivering results and protecting the Maison—and why product-first localization beats “one-size-fits-all” every time. From launching Lancôme Absolue and Génifique , to leading across Asia in roles spanning L’Oréal, LVMH (Dior), and Coty , Gu...

In this short solo episode, I unpack practical lessons from real AI implementation work drawn from our September 2025 executive webinar, “AI Implementation: Governance, Strategy, and Practical Applications.” Building on cases from executive search, manufacturing, retail, and regulated markets, I focus on three pillars of effective AI adoption today: human‑centered AI applications , disciplined imp...

In this short solo episode, I unpack practical lessons from a July 2025 executive webinar I co‑hosted with Cosmoprof Asia on “Beyond China: Unlocking Asia Pacific’s True Beauty Potential.” Drawing on insights from leaders across analytics, retail, and brand strategy , I break down three critical dimensions of APAC growth today: treating China as a deliberate strategic choice (not an assumption) ,...

"Trust happens when expertise meets warmth." Ipsos leader Javier Calvar on why curiosity, determination, and empathy build careers that last—and why impact beats activity every time. From London to Shanghai during the WTO boom, then back to London, and now leading in Hong Kong, Javier breaks down 30 years of staying with companies long enough to compound results. He reveals the framework that's gu...