So This Is My Why

Nigel Stanislaus is a highly celebrated makeup artist who’s been a part of international television shows like Project Runway, X-Factor, Make Me A Supermodel and also a judge on Australia’s Next Top Model and Asia’s Next Top Model.  His editorial works span the likes of Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan L’Officiel, Elle, Marie Claire, GQ, and Esquire and he has worked with celebrities like John Le...

Robert James Ashe is a 4-time Emmy nominated editor and title designer, best known for being the Head of Post Production on Conan for nearly 8 years. He has also worked for Conan O'Brien on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour, The 2014 MTV Movie Awards, and his show CONAN on TBS. Rob also served as the announcer, title designer, a...

Amra Naidoo is the co-founder of Accelerating Asia, an early stage venture capital fund that runs programs for startups and investors, and General Partner at Accelerating Asia Ventures. Prior to that, she was the Head of Corporate Partnerships at UN Women, including Project Inspire (a UN Women global social entrepreneurship program) and a part of muru-D’s, which was one of the top startup accelera...

Karl Mak is a Singaporean entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of HEPMIL Media Group: a holding company that owns SGAG, MGAG, PGAG, SGEEK and HEPMIL Creators’ Network. If you’re a fan of memes, then you’re in for a treat because that is precisely what HEPMIL specialises in! Karl shares how he almost became a professional swimmer, how he built a flourishing real estate career while in school, his ex...

Yulia Brodskaya is a Russian artist and illustrator known for painting with paper.  Pioneering contemporary paper quilling, she uses thick, coloured paper to compose stunningly detailed 3d portraits. And her work is owned by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Hermés, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Paramount Pictures, Country Music Association, The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, New York O...

Rahul Chaudhary is the Managing Director & CEO at CG Corp Global and CG Hospitality Holdings. And the second son of Binod Chaudhary, who is the first & only Forbes-listed multi-billionaire from Nepal!  In this STIMY episode, Rahul shares what it’s like being the 4th-generation heir of a 140-year family business empire, starting from being a sporting champion at boarding school to striking...

Kendrick Nguyen is the co-founder & CEO of Republic - one of the US’s top equity crowdfunding platforms where over USD$ 100 million has already been raised in just 2021 alone. And boasts a heavily curated list of startups that, according to Kendrick, is harder to get into than Harvard! Before Republic, Kendrick was a trading and securities lawyer at Wall Street. Knowing that this wasn’t for hi...

Nick Bernstein is the Senior Vice President of Late Night Programming (West Coast) at ViacomCBS & is the executive in charge of the Late Late Show with James Corden.  In Part 2 of this STIMY episode with Nick, we explore how the Comcast's 51% acquisition of NBC Universal impacted Nick personally, how he ended up being the executive producer of the Pete Holmes show & ultimately (current...

Nick Bernstein is the Senior Vice President of Late Night Programming (West Coast) at ViacomCBS & is the executive in charge of the Late Late Show with James Corden.  In Part 1 of this episode with Nick, we explore what it was like growing up in Maryland and how he would spend 4 hours every Sunday morning charting America’s Top 40 biggest hits on radio, the impact that Camp Taconic had & c...

PART 2 of STIMY’s interview with Ning-Geng Ong - Artisan chocolate maker, farmer, and founder of Chocolate Concierge & Culture Cacao. For Part 1, please refer to the earlier episode.  Highlights: 2:48: How the signature flavours of chocolate are brought out 4:34: What Ning means by saying he is “fiercely unbending” 12:10: Why Ning runs fermentation anywhere between 6 to 71 days! 18:23: The she...

Part 1 of STIMY's episode with Ning-Geng Ong - a farmer, chocolate marker, flavour fanatic and founder of Chocolate Concierge & Culture Cacao, where he makes incredible single-origin Malaysian chocolate.  In this episode, Ning shares his journey from majoring in physics and computer science, to founding a business in chocolate making. In particular, what it is like working with the indigen...

Dato’ Thomas Mun Lung Lee is a Senior Partner & founding member of Lee Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill - one of the largest law firms in Malaysia. He was also previously Chairman of AIA Public Takaful Bhd and AIA Malaysia Berhad, had directorships at AIG Malaysia Insurance Berhad, was a member of the Appeals Committee of Bursa Malaysia Berhad and Chairman and Non-Executive Director Alliance...

Oz Pearlman is an Emmy award-winning mentalist & magician who recently emerged as the runner up & finalist in America’s Got Talent Season 10 in 2015.  In this STIMY, Oz shares what he was like as a child, discovering magic on a cruise ship to Bermuda and how that transformed his life as he obsessed over mastering magic.  Oz got so good, he paid his own way through college and even continue...

Lincoln Lee Ming is a Malaysian social entrepreneur, biomedical science graduate from University College London, UK & founder of a social enterprise called Rice Inc., which seeks to combat the 26 million tons of rice wasted during production every year & help smallholder rice farmers break through the convoluted supply chain  In this STIMY episode, we cover how Lincoln’s entrepreneurial st...

Azran Osman-Rani is one of Malaysia's most well-known CEOs & entrepreneur and in this STIMY episode, we cover his colourful & highly impressive career that has included being: CEO and Co-Founder, Naluri Hidup (now) CEO of iflix Malaysia. Dragon-Keeper of the Tao CEO, AirAsia X Berhad Senior Director, Business Development, Astro All Asia Networks plc Senior Vice President, Kuala Lumpur...

Lim Pui Wan is a Malaysian miniature artist who discovered her love of miniatures at the age of 14 and has, since 2014 under “Picoworm”, become a full-time professional miniature artist. In 2020, she was even part of Ryan Reynold’s “Ryan Doesn’t Know” Snapchat series! In this STIMY episode, Pui Wan shares what it takes to forge a path to becoming a professional miniature artist.  Highlights: 4:10:...

Best Known as director of the George Town Festival, Joe Sidek has established himself as one of Malaysia’s strong advocates for the arts. Prior to becoming a festival director, Joe Sidek played major roles in various forms of art expression – from event management, art curator-ship, restaurant ownership and even costume design. He also still runs his family–owned textile chemical factory, Chemdyes...

Nicky Gumbel is an English Anglican priest, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, London and pioneer of the Alpha Course - a course that has reached over 25 million people who are looking to discover the meaning to life! This episode is so special to me not least because I used to attend HTB myself!  In this STIMY episode, we explore Nicky’s incredible faith journey - how he went from being an argumenta...

Wai Ken Wong is the Country Manager of StashAway (Malaysia). He first worked in investments in Khazanah Nasional Berhad, then became the Vice President of the Equity Capital Markets at Affin Hwang Capital, before entering the startup world.  Want to learn what it's like working in the fintech startup world, all things investments & the intricacies of how StashAway is set up? This is the ep...

Richard Lui is a TV news anchor for MSNBC and NBC News and was previously at CNN Worldwide, where he became the first Asian American male to anchor a daily, national cable news show. He also earned the Peabody and Emmy awards for his team reporting at CNN during Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Oil Spill. Mediaite ranked Richard among the top 100 in news buzz on its "Power Grid Influence Index o...

He Ruiming & Goh Wei Choon are the Singaporean/Malaysia duo behind The Woke Salaryman: an incredible personal finance page that educates people about making better financial and life choices through the use of simple albeit beautiful comics.  Since 2019, they have rapidly grown to over 204k followers on Instagram & 218k on Facebook - and we spend this STIMY interview uncovering how they fi...

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva and the creator of Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast. He is an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley) and an adjunct professor of the University of New South Wales. He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He has written Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enc...

John Yohan Kim serves as Managing Partner at Amasia, a cross-border venture capital firm that helps technology companies get global. He is a Kauffman Fellow, a Term Member at the Council of Foreign Relations, a member of the Young Leader's Circle at the Milken Institute and serves on various corporate and non-profit boards including those of Dialpad Communications, Kairos Society Asean and the...

Ng Kai Yuan is the co-founder of Our Grandfather Story: a Singapore-based digital publisher dedicated to uncovering timeless and overlooked stories across Southeast Asia. Founded in 2017 with three other co-founders, Our Grandfather Story started as a school project! More specifically, an assignment for an Advance Photojournalism module at Nanyang Technological University. All four college student...

Kyne is the stage name of Kyne Santos: a mathematician, YouTube/Tik Tok star with nearly 1 million followers collectively, Drag Queen & contestant in Season 1 of Canada’s Drag Race. Born in Manila, Philippines, Kyne moved to Kitchener, Ontario at the age of 5 with his family. Since young, mathematics and academics were a priority at home and he developed a love and knack for it. In Grade, 9, K...