Profiles

Chris Yeo – aSpecial Media Founder and Chief Executive

Chris has worked in the IT industry for 25 years. He entered it after graduating with a computer science and mathematics degree. His experience spans creating new products to creating new companies.

Among his successes is a software company that grew from inception in 1994 into an internationally-acclaimed supply chain execution software solutions provider.

This company designed and built large-scale realtime systems deployed globally for Fortune 500 global companies, such as Panasonic and FedEx. Chris was actively involved in the programming, while steering the company as Chief Executive.

More recently, he was responsible for putting in place a highly scalable and robust architecture and infrastructure empowering rednano.sg and Rednano LOCATE, Singapore Press Holdings' directory and mobile search application, to provide award-winning services.

He is passionate about cloud computing, search and Web 2.0 technologies. He is currently designing and architecting realtime applications that live natively in the cloud. Chris is also researching the use of GPUs to power massively parallel algorithms in the cloud.

An active participant in online social networks, he blogs frequently about topics ranging from technology to photography, and continues to do software coding.

Paul Jansen – aSpecial Media Founder and Chairman

Paul Jansen was an award-winning journalist, who held leadership positions in the print, broadcasting and Internet operations of The Straits Times newspaper and the Singapore Press Holdings group (SPH). He was also a pioneer in each of these mediums. He founded one of the world’s first online newspapers, The Straits Times Interactive, now re-named straitstimes.com, and the search and directory engine Rednano.sg, which won regional and international honours. He was also the first editor of a daily newspaper in SPH, Streats, to move from Editorial to the Marketing Division and injected a new perspective there.

His other contributions to Singapore Press Holdings included playing a key role in the successful tender bid for a mobile licence. This resulted in the creation of the telco M1, which broke SingTel’s monopoly. He was also a member of a team involved in a tender for a fixed line licence.

Paul was a Fellow of the World Press Institute, Macalester College, Minnesota, and a Reuter Fellow on the John S Knight Fellowship programme at Stanford University, California.

These experiences have given him a unique insight into the challenges and opportunities of the different media platforms, the divide between the analogue and digital worlds, as well as the bridges that link all of them for the benefit of the publisher, advertiser and consumer. He is passionate about the media industry and readily shares his experiences and observations at local and international media conferences to which he is invited.

As comfortable with the online world as he is with the print and broadcast world, Paul is the founder and chief editor of Merawan (www.merawan.com), a website for general aviation in Asia. He is a licensed pilot. When not flying his Piper aircraft, he is always on the hunt for flight experiences in WWII planes.

Shirley Tan – aSpecial Media Vice President, Corporate Development

Shirley Tan has one of the best all-round experiences in the fastest-moving industry in the past decade in this part of the world - the telecommunications sector. She worked with the biggest names in the region and was involved in pioneering projects in mobile and the Internet.

Her interest in, and knowledge of, breakthrough delivery systems and reach have been developed over the years with her participation in such new ventures as Magix, currently known as SingNet Broadband, and *SEND, an SMS text-based content service.

This technical interest and expertise has been enhanced with an appreciation of the commercial potential and realities of the telco sector. Among other things, she was involved in due diligence projects in the region. For instance, she was part of SingTel's cross-divisional team tasked to study the feasibility of investing in the telecom markets in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Her desire to find optimum ways to reach people led her to join Singapore Press Holdings(SPH) at a time when the newspaper company was developing better ways to service its customers and reach new ones. Shirley was headhunted by a subsidiary of the media group, SPH Search, where she was tasked to launch the region's first local mobile search engine. The mobile service, Rednano LOCATE, was subsequently singled out, against competition from the biggest service providers and telecoms operators around the world, for an international award for innovation by Global Telecoms Business.

She honed her understanding of the link between data and customer management when she later joined StarHub to launch a Predictive Analytics program as part of the company's CRM strategy.

Today, with her knowledge of the importance of Big Data and how organisations - whether international telcos or small start-ups, cutting-edge teams or established traditional business companies - are urgently seeking to gather, process and use it, Shirley is uniquely placed to contribute to aSpecial Media as it moves to the forefront with the development of Asia's largest behavioural database.

Sally Loh – aSpecial Media Founder and Vice President - Operations and Admin

Sally Loh has considerable experience managing the administration of medium and large companies. She began her career in the uniformed ranks of the Singapore Police Force. She moved to Keppel Communications, a subsidiary of Keppel T&T, to broaden her horizons and joined its administration team. This was a time of great change in the country's telecommunications landscape with the ending of the monopoly of Singapore Telecommunications.

Other jobs followed.  Each one was of greater scope. Prior to starting aSpecial Media Pte Ltd with Christopher Yeo and Paul Jansen, Sally was with the Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) group. Her duties there included serving as the head of Administration of Singapore Press Holding's subsidiary SPH Search Pte Ltd. She was also de facto Personal Assistant to its chief executive. As this was a start-up, she was responsible for setting up the office and the administrative processes from Ground Zero, a situation she was familiar with. SPH Search, which launched the local search and directory engine Rednano, was an innovator in digital media and mobile advertising and won several international awards.

An inveterate traveller, Sally enjoys the mind-broadening experience of visiting new places and trying new things.

Jagapriya Somasundram – aSpecial Media Engineering Manager

Priya became a software engineer after graduating with a Bachelor of Information Technology Degreee from Anna University, India. She was involved in several milestone IT project, giving her experience in integrating cross platforms, web/mobile technology, search engines and ad networks.

Before joining aSpecial Media, she spent four years with SPH Search, a subsidiary of Singapore Press Holdings. There, she was part of the team which created the award-winning Rednano search and directory engine. It showcased her ability to build robust products, including rednano.sg, Rednano LOCATE, and a Contexual/Mobile Ad Network.

Her skills were acknowledged in 2010 when she was awarded the "Find of the Year" prize by her employer, SPH Search, for her dedication and product delivery.

When not cooking up new software code, she likes to spend time in the kitchen whipping up new, innovative dishes. Her other interests include interior design. This is based on the concept of integrating multiple entities to create an experience which is greater than the sum of its parts, something she does daily in her programming.

B. T. Ram – aSpecial Media Ad Operation Manager

Ram brings to aSpecial Media a keen interest in the online world. Like our Chairman Paul Jansen, he started his career creating content. Then, he saw exciting developments in the Internet and switched to online marketing. By then, Ram had earned his Bachelors in Commerce from the University of Madras, in Chennai, India. He picked up a Certification in Microsoft Adcenter.

His experience in the challenges and opportunities of online marketing made him realise that a new paradigm was required to ensure accuracy and relevance for consumers and advertisers. And he found this in behavioural data, which also led him to the doorstep of aSpecial Media, which is building Asia's largest such database.

He joined the company in 2012 to take charge of media operations - a responsibility which sees him planning and media buying media for our clients worldwide. His skill in providing value comes from his years in digital advertising, and his involvement in online media planning, account management, search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.

While he is keeping his eye on improving client satisfaction through greater use of behavioural targeting, Ram is also interested in getting a big picture perspective in another sense - he wants to take up skydiving. He is currently looking for a good place to do this - which is essentially anywhere nearby.