University of Sydney

London School of Economics and Political Science - Peking University Summer Course

CRCC Asia

Chief of Staff  -  hyper-growth virtual events platform Remo.co (We're hiring!)

Assumed an additional role as Chief of Staff to Group CEO, Danny Yeung.

Prenetics

Group Chief of Staff

- As part of our recent organizational restructure, I was promoted to People & Operations VP, overseeing our People & Culture Team, in addition to Procurement, Supply Chain & Operations, Customer Success, Product Operations and Market Expansion for our Consumer Healthcare business CircleDNA, as well as our Group level operations in Hong Kong.

VP, Operations, People & Strategic Projects

- On the Prenetics Group Executive Leadership Team
- Following the wind down of our COVID-19 testing business, I led the complete global restructuring of Prenetics at the group level, resulting in a 70% reduction in our workforce size, helping to streamline the remaining business and achieve our cost cutting targets.
- Led and successfully resolved all employee relations dispute cases and labour department disputes following the difficult restructuring exercise.
- Initiated and implemented an ATS (Workable), HRIS(Bob), Payroll (JustLogin) systems in order to automate and drive operational efficiency across the HR function.
- Implemented routine employee engagement surveys and pulse checks in order to monitor and receive timely employee feedback across the region.
- Made continuous improvements to our performance review cycles and processes in order to drive more holistic performance assessments, and to streamline the process and eliminate all tedious and non-impactful exercises.
- After shutting down 3 regional offices, I led the centralisation of our shared services centre and built a new team in KL, going from 0-20 individuals within 3 months.
- Adjusted our compensation and benefits structure, resulting in 100% coverage of medical benefits, and an increase in 2 days of annual leave as part of overall adjustment.
- Worked alongside our ELT to partner on organizational & workforce planning, resource planning, employee relations, career development and performance improvement.

VP, People and Culture

- Oversaw our entire global partnerships strategy across 3 tiers, strategic integrations, ambassadors and reseller programs. Managed a team of 7.
- Set up Remo's partnership strategy from scratch, launching a 3 pronged partnership approach to reach revenue and expansion goals.
- Planned, executed and recruited over 80 reseller partners within 6 months of program launch. Sourced and negotiated over 12 technical integration opportunities with other platforms in the ecosystem.
- Set up a scalable system to ensure sustainable operations for the expansion of the reseller program. Account managed over 25 of our biggest agency and reseller partners, developing strong relationships to ensure increased engagement and deal flow.

Remo.co

Head Of Partnerships

- Oversaw HR/People Ops, Finance and Business Operations units across all 3 entities globally (USA, HK, JP). 
- Set up all internal operating procedures and policies from scratch, assessed and procured adequate systems for accounting, sales, customer success, marketing. Familiar with Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Freshdesk, Intercom, Quickbooks, Xero, Vanta.
- Leadership & Communications: Led communications of the leadership team, ensuring we had a cohesive strategy across departments, ensuring each leader had the necessary resources to execute their quarterly strategies. Provided pivotal recommendations to department heads to improve operational efficiency and clear commercial direction.
- Planned and wrote communications for each major business decision (diversion of resources, efforts, strategy pivot, layoffs) and effectively communicated management plans to the entire company at town-halls. Led all change management initiatives.
- Worked with the CEO on establishing the core mission, vision and values of the company. Led the rollout of the company values throughout the year through a culture and people strategy, implementing best practices and forming employee interest committees.
- Successfully planned 4 company virtual retreats as part of the wider culture committee formation and execution.
- Human Resources: Managed our HR team, leading all elements of recruitment, employee engagement, employer branding, onboarding, offboarding, culture, performance reviews, payroll and capacity planning. Handled all complex employee relations & misconduct issues.
- Reviewed and edited all employee and contractor agreements globally, ensuring regulatory compliance, documentation consistency and adequate risk analysis across the workforce.
- Compliance & Risk Management: Project managed end to end our security compliance process in obtaining SOC2 and ISO 27001 certification, implementing necessary operational changes and internal communications in order to pass the audit.

Chief Of Staff

What is Remo?
Remo is an interactive virtual event platform that humanizes the online event experience.
Today, Remo has grown from 5 to over 100 members, all working globally.

Whether people use Remo for work, virtual, or hybrid events, we know that meeting people online can be a daunting task.

Our events bring communities together built on purpose and common interests. We provide opportunities to grow and facilitate trust, thus leading to organic relationships in the virtual space, as well as offline. These common factors create comfortable networking settings, setting the stage for real human interaction and creating deep connections that can last a lifetime.

As Chief of Staff, I lead:
➕ People Operations & Culture
➕ Recruitment
➕ Strategic Partnerships
➕ Strategic Integrations
➕ Agency Partner Program & Partner Enablement
➕ Business Operations
➕ Special Projects & Strategy with CEO
➕ Leadership Comms
➕ GTM Strategy & New Markets

MY REMO STORY:
➕ Joined Remo when it was a team of 8 people, scaled the team and operations to 80+ people within 6 months of joining.
➕ Personally generated over $800k MRR in sales within the first year.
➕ Hired majority of leadership team, put in place key foundational operations within accounting, people ops and partnerships.

Head of Growth & Sales

MY HYPE STORY:
➕ Built a robust pipeline of 100+ prospective deals and partnerships in 18 months.
➕ Landed 4 clients within 5 months of joining, bringing in over $500K USD in deal value.
➕ Led a strategy and research team for a Korean AI recruitment startup (Genesis AI) looking to expand into China that resulted in a 50-page report on the industry, competitive analysis and GTM strategy in 3 months.
➕ Responsible for recruiting founding team members across portfolio companies (15 hires for 4 companies in 1 year) and for internal HYPE team recruitment.

ABOUT HYPE:
HYPE is a team of passionate Venture Builders that help Startups demystify, unlock, and succeed in Asia. By leveraging our local market expertise, operation networks, and proven experience we partner with Founders and Investors to scale their business into pan-Asia markets. We expand the addressable market potential for our partners and work hand-in-hand as stakeholders to build long term winning businesses.

HYPE

Market Lead Greater China

Core Project: Set up team and operations in Hong Kong from July 2019 - Nov 2019.

MY STARTUPCARE STORY:
➕ Hired 3 core founding members of the Hong Kong team expansion
➕ Led the planning and execution of StartupCare’s exhibition space at RISE Summit 2019
➕ Event marketing: Planned and executed StartupCare’s first marketing event in Hong Kong with over 100 attendees.
➕ Set up operations in Hong Kong: Identified and negotiated office space, tracked accounting expenses.
➕ Developed pipeline of partnership meetings with other players in the digital insurance ecosystem in Hong Kong (at least 30 meetings in 3 months).

ABOUT STARTUPCARE HONG KONG:
StartupCare Hong Kong is an InsurTech startup founded by The CareVoice and its shareholders based in Shanghai, offering tailored corporate health solutions to empower SMEs and startups in Hong Kong. In partnership with an insurance company in Hong Kong, StartupCare Hong Kong provides tailor-made employee health benefits solutions with comprehensive health services and cost-effective medical plans for all ages and demographics, with access to a broad network of over 2,500 medical providers. 

Combined with cutting-edge mobile health services, StartupCare helps businesses control budgets, and saves costs in unforeseen productivity loss. Ultimately, the company aspires to support founders and their teams on further growth for their businesses, without being held back by issues in well-being.

StartupCare Hong Kong

Growth Advisor

Core Project: International Franchise Expansion and Scaling Operations (June 2019 - Nov 2019)

MY BAKEBE STORY:
➕ Business Development: Travelled to Dubai, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia for 3 months to pitch the Bakebe franchise narrative. Resulted in 2 franchise agreements signed in the Philippines and Malaysia by the end of 2019.
➕ Hiring: Hired and onboarded 2 key members for sales development and operations, resulting in core structural processes built out for franchise expansion.
➕ Operations: Developed the franchise agreements and franchise operational handbooks in order to structure and scale existing operations of local stores. Implemented operational training, people operations policies.

Bakebe

MY GUCYCLE STORY
➕ Joined as one of their founding instructors
➕ Taught 8-10 classes per week for 2.5 years
➕ Hired over 30 staff from instructors to operations, front desk, marketing, sales
➕ Organized community events and started a charity program where we would use classes to raise money for different causes each month, over 100 participants each month.
➕ Led client base from 100 customers in their first month of operations in 2016 to 20,000+ customers in 2019.

ABOUT GUCYCLE 
China's first spinning focused fitness brand with 4 studios across Beijing and Shanghai.

GUCYCLE

Senior Instructor, HR/Recruitment

MY JINGJOBS STORY:
➕ Started off as an idea I slowly developed due to my own frustrations and confusion while job hunting as a recent graduate in a new city at the age of 22.
➕ Built a community around career mentorship and career advice for new grads and young professionals, which led to the creation of an online job board.
➕ Over the course of 6 years, built up a database of over 60,000 young multi-lingual professionals. Consulted for China's top tech startups including Uber China, Didi, Mobike, Bytedance, Xiaomi, Alibaba, VIPKID, EtonKids and global firms like Freeman, Daimler, Finsbury etc and successfully placed hundreds of candidates at roles within these firms.
➕ Bootstrapped and built up a team of 12 staff across Beijing and Shanghai.
➕ Successfully exited and acquired by HelloCareer.cn in 2019 after 6 years of operations.

ABOUT JINGJOBS:
JingJobs was a recruitment consulting firm and online job board connecting
bilingual talent with startups and SMEs.
JingJobs was the 2015 recipient of the Phoenix Grant provided by the Chaoyang Government to foreign entrepreneurs.
Successfully exited and acquired by HelloCareer.cn in 2019.

HELPFUL LINKS:
➕ http://www.cnetnews.com.cn/2015/1113/3067503.shtml
➕ http://45.55.166.226/jingjobs/
➕ http://femaleentrepreneurshk.com/new-blog-1/2015/8/17/samantha-kwok-founder-of-jingjobs
➕ http://www.thatsmags.com/beijing/post/13993/5-things-samantha-kwok-on-starting-a-business

Samantha Kwok