Entrepreneur, China market expert and education-marketing leader. Co-founder of PingPong Digital, based in New York, working across the US, UK and Asia. This site is an interactive game: twelve chapters that introduce me professionally and personally.
I don't look at markets from one point of view. I speak the language, I've studied how China works and operates, and I built a company that connects East and West. That gives me a rare, innate read on China's platforms and consumers, and through them, a preview of how the next generation of consumers everywhere will think, act, and buy.
Everyone in our industry was fighting over the same crowded markets. I went looking for open water: education marketing for emerging markets, a space few competitors were going after. I spearheaded that move, and it made PingPong Digital a global leader, with more than 100 university partners today. See the opportunity early, commit before it's comfortable, build the playbook others copy later.
Home is New York. You'll often find me in Shanghai, London, or Tokyo. Same brand, four markets: almost everything changes. The strategy travels; the execution gets rebuilt for every market. Working inside different cultures is what builds a global mindset, a globalized view and a localized one, each adapting the other.
My opinions get sought out, printed, and put on stages. Publications around the world, guest lectures at London Business School, panels, keynotes, and two podcasts of my own. I don't have to tell you I know my stuff. The invitations do that for me.
I'm an entrepreneur before anything else. Running an agency means the client work comes first, and it does. It never stops the building. Our in-house AI tools came out of exactly that drive. Part of me is always on the next thing: what keeps us competitive, what we build before anyone asks, where we go from here. The services take care of today. The restlessness takes care of tomorrow.
China marketing since before most Western brands had heard of WeChat. Worked in, not read about.
Fun fact: I'm a certified personal trainer. Not what most people expect after the marketing talk. I like things that reward consistency: training, nutrition, showing up. The same discipline builds everything else.
I think presence is one of the most important things you can give someone. When we're together, we should actually be together. Phone away, attention up. It's rare enough now that people remember it.
Hand me the mic at karaoke and it's 童话. A Mandarin classic, and the fastest way to win a room in Shanghai. Commit to the big note or don't take the mic.
At home I play mixologist. I build my own cocktails: new flavor combinations, test batches, the occasional noble failure. Ask me what the latest creation is; there is always one in development. The martini spec never changes, though. Some things are settled.
I've lived in six cities across three countries, and each one rewired something: how I talk, how I work, what feels like home. New York holds that title now. The rest still travel with me.
My podcast is called Founder Grumblings: the world of startups, with my own take and analysis on what is actually going on. The grumbling is real. So is the insight.