Technology Driving the Future of Gig Economy

In a broadcast career spanning 17 years, Audrey Raj has covered everything from missing planes to the Olympics. The broadcast journalist has interviewed and moderated discussions featuring local and international guests from across the spectrum - politics to business, sports and entertainment. She is currently an Executive Producer & Presenter at Malaysia’s only premier business and current affairs station, where she focuses on news and interviews on all things entrepreneurship, business and tech. As a moderator, emcee and host, Audrey has worked with prominent brands on stage and online like Volvo, Maxis, Adobe, BMW, Touch ‘n Go and TM. She’s also a lover of all things sports, and is known for her insightful interviews with hundreds of sports personalities like Rafael Nadal, Lewis Hamilton, Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson and Dato’ Nicol David.

Shareen is MD & Co-Founder and Director of Sorga Innovation, a boutique advisory firm specialising in Sustainable Development, ESG and human capital/ talent strategies and solutions. She co-designed and co-created digital solutions around talent in particular to enable an ecosystem for future of work, connecting organisations with experts and professional talent. In Sustainable Development/ESG, Shareen’s area of specialisation is in development of sustainability polices and strategies, advocating the adoption of strategies around ESG and transition to a low carbon economy. Central to her work was in spearheading the design of a sustainability adjusted valuation model for socially responsible investments and value creation for Khazanah Nasional Berhad. Prior to founding Sorga Innovation, Shareen was CEO of Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad, a talent and human capital government agency under the Economic Planning Unit of Malaysia under the Prime Minister’s Office. Between 2007-2016, Shareen was Director of Corporate Responsibility/Sustainability at Khazanah Nasional. Prior to joining Khazanah she was the Chief Operating Officer of Mercy Malaysia, a medical humanitarian organisation with a global footprint. Shareen is a Member of the Sustainable Development Committee of Bursa Malaysia, a Board Member of MTT Shipping Berhad, Accelerate Global Sdn Bhd (A Malaysian start up) and a Board of Trustee of Yayasan UEM. She is also Vice President of the International Women Federation of Commerce and Industry (IWFCIM) Malaysia. Shareen holds a Master of Studies in Sustainability Leadership from University of Cambridge. She also has a Master in Public Policy, from University Malaya and a Bachelor (Hons) in Mass Communications from University Sains Malaysia.

Qadir has worked in many types of companies such as national postal services, oil and gas, retail, telco, and education. He has experience in holding different roles such as Technologist Engineer, System Analyst, Consultant, IT Manager, and CTO. He also currently serve as Director of Technology at Love and Laugh Berhad. He is well versed, enthusiastic, and have grit towards his ideas, projects, and tasks at hand. He is responsible for strategizing, planning, and delivering for SOLVNEX, a tech-based platform as a whole. He has a vast of experience in IT industries such as ERP (SAP), full-stack application, AWS architecture, full-cycle application development, design thinking, wireframe, and agile project management. He successfully created a platform powered by machine learning that actively being used by corporate in Malaysia. With this he managed to bring gig hiring into corporate hiring model. He also one the member of Economic Action Council (EAC) under Prime Minister Office (PMO) to discuss on Social Entrepreneurship in Malaysia. Furthermore, he also actively giving talks on gig economy across various platforms such as Perdana Leadership Foundation (PLF) and etc. While studies in university his had receive Heart of Gold award for his contribution in humanitarian work across Asian countries. Qadir is passionate about the idea of bridging gig professionals to corporates and SMEs which he believes that the ecosystem is the future of the workforce.

Mohd Shahar Ismail is currently attached to Special Project, Human Resource Division at Social Security Organisation (SOCSO). He read law at UiTM and possesses over 34 years of experience with SOCSO carrying various responsibilities which includes Secretary to the Board, State Director, Head of Self Employed Division and Head of Corporate Management Division. He is people centric and extremely passionate about social security and social protection. In 2017, he represented SOCSO for a workshop on The Future of Social Protection organised by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Berlin, Germany. He was also featured in many television programmes discussing on social security and social protection.

Shahryn Azmi is co-founder of MakeTimePay, Malaysia’s fastest growing gig employment portal, a venture predicated on the basis that employment opportunity should be democratised. In other words, everyone should have an equal chance of working, something he says, is not the case today because the market and ecosystem leans in favour of the educated and connected. In his 38 years of professional experience, he has worked in twelve different industries, living and working in seven different countries. He started in technology, then went into defence advisory, oil and gas, strategy, healthcare, telecommunications, organizational consulting, and attraction design and development. He spent a number of years working for the Prime Minister’s Department in the drive to improve public service delivery and is quick to say that he was not in favour of four hour passports when the Prime Minister ordered it, because people want absolute predictability not (just) speed. In 2014, he was headhunted into Khazanah Nasional to head the effort to manage the human aspect of the closure of the national airlines, MAS. That remains until today, the country’s largest corporate lay-off involving 20,000 workers. His mandate was not to get everyone re-employed but to “ensure they all landed well,” something he and his team took extremely seriously as it affected lives. That Khazanah unit was closed in mid 2020 as a result of decisions made by the Government elected in 2018, but in those six years of operation, over 70,000 individuals benefitted. It was the impetus for the establishment of his current venture, MakeTimePay. Shahryn has a Bachelor’s in Political Science and Economics, and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School while also cross registered at HBS, proof he says that you don’t have to be an accountant to be effective in business.

Mohd Redzuan Affandi Abdul Rahim (Redzuan) is the Director of Digital Adoption Department with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC). His key responsibility is to promote and facilitate adoption of digital technologies and digital solutions to benefit businesses and society. The task requires him to oversee the development and adoption of Sharing Economy models in Malaysia, addressing key enablers such as policies, standards and regulation, and facilitating eCommerce adoption which includes exporting of Malaysian products and services to strategic market. On Society Adoption, he oversee the ‘gig and freelance workforce’ development programme, and also programme to nurture local ‘digital entrepreneurs’. He is involved in few coordination committee on SME digitalisation and is currently the Vice Chairman for the Technical Committee (TC/C/9) on Sharing Economy in Malaysia. He also represents Malaysia at global level and is a member of the ISO/TC 324 Committee on Sharing Economy. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science and Information System) from the University of Salford, United Kingdom and is also an ITIL certified individual. He is a member of the Internet Society since 2002 and was the Vice- President of the Internet Society – Malaysia Chapter (2019 – 2020). He is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and previously served as an Executive Committee of the IEEE Computer Society – Malaysia Chapter.

Rina Neoh is Co-Founder and Managing Director of the World’s 1st Syariah Compliant Venture Capital, Ficus Capital. She currently sits on the Board of Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE), The National Trade Promotion Agency of Malaysia. Rina is also a senator representing Malaysia in the World Business Angel Forum and is on the list of board of WBAF’s Investment Fund and The Women Leaders board. Rina has more than 25 years of experience in both the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds. With a solid foundation in Bachelor of Science (Honors) in Computer Science and keen business sense acquired through post-graduate MBA in International Business, Rina has delivered multi-million dollar returns and holds a solid track record in investing, building, growing, and/or exiting successful startups and scaleups, in such areas as education, food, fashion, pharmaceutical, e-commerce, esports, information technology, artificial intelligence and robotics, human resources development, and executive education, among others. She holds senior executive positions (at CEO/CXO levels) and board directorships in private and public sectors across the Asia Pacific. She is passionately involved with philanthropic causes and during her spare time, she will volunteer in organizations related to children’s education, youth development, women empowerment, community building, digital literacy, and entrepreneurship education. She serves as an executive coach and senior adviser to several business advisory boards, non-governmental organizations, and educational institutions such as UNITAR. She was recently appointed by the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre (SBC) as one of the working members of the Sarawak Economic Action Council, SEAC) working on the innovation policy for Sarawak 2030.