Madame Cao Thi Ngoc Dung is currently Chairwoman of Board of Directors of PNJ Joint Stock Company, Chairwoman of Ho Chi Minh City Women Entrepreneurs Association (Hawee).

Madame Dung was born in a family with a profound business tradition in Quang Ngai. She created the business philosophy of “trust” between departments for PNJ. She believes that in the jewelry and precious metal businesses, “trust” needs to be exist between each other then the business can grow and last long. It is this belief that has linked PNJ's leaders and employees to achieve the success as it does today.

Cao Thi Ngoc Dung was well-known as the "superwoman" when she helped PNJ overcome the difficult period from 2007 to 2011. She also succeeded in restructuring PNJ with excellent business strategies. PNJ under her excellent leadership has achieved impressive growth rates and become one of the leading gold and jewelry businesses in Vietnam. In 2019, Cao Thi Ngoc Dung received the award of lifetime achievement in the Asian jewelry industry.

At the end of 2019, PNJ recorded the profit up to 1000 billion, revenue up to 17,000 billion, holding more than a quarter of the market share of the gold jewelry industry.

 

Franchise Expert, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor
Nguyen Phi Van holds an MBA from Australia majoring in marketing communication. Her experience spans over 20 years as a senior executive in brand, retail, and franchise development across global emerging markets in Asia, The Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. She has engaged in various national projects in developing the creative economy and the entrepreneurship network for various governments.

She is currently advisor to Project 844 under the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam on startup & innovation, board member of ASEAN Business Angel Alliance, chairwoman of Vietnam Angel Network, and is an angel investor with a portfolio of 23 companies.

Phi Van is 2015 award winner of Retail Leadership presented by Asia Retail Congress, 2017 & 2018 award winner of 100 Top Great Retail Minds presented by World Retail Congress, 2019 award winner of ASEAN Outstanding Business Award, and has been curated in Top 100 powerful women of the global franchise industry 2019 & 2020.

Phi Van is the author of seven books, “Franchising – The Short Route to Global Markets”, “Cross the Rice Field, Reach the World”, “Go Global: An MSME’s Guide to Global Franchising”, “I, The Future and The World”, “In Search of Myself”, “Nym - My Future Self”, and most recently “Opening the Future”.

 

Shweta was born in the city of Bhopal in India, and after spending the majority of her life in India, moved to Los Angeles for a short stint and the last eight years having been in Singapore. She’s the youngest of three kids, married to a photographer and a doting dog-mom to a rescue dog.

The last ten years of her professional life has been spent in the high tech and high growth companies that are Facebook and Netflix. At both these companies She was part of teams that were experiencing hyper growth. Facebook invested in her by giving her the opportunity to lead HR for several countries in APAC. At Netflix, she has helped build the region to what it is today and managed a 50+ member talent & HR team, where every day they strove hard to deliver on the key talent priorities for Asia Pacific. Along the way she has watched and learnt from the many inspirational leaders who helm these companies.
Prior to these companies, she spent the first decade of her mcareer building a solid foundation in HR and management principles and getting a deeper understanding of her own strengths. The organisations that she worked in like GE, HSBC and Hewitt Associates gave her the opportunity to solve problems at scale. Her consulting years with Hewitt Associates were especially helpful in honing critical thinking and problem solving skills. She is super curious about Leadership, Culture, Inclusion and Innovation in the HR domain and regularly speak at companies, universities and leadership panels on these topics.

While she have always learnt from the leaders she have worked with, she would not hesitate to say that her father has played a big role in influencing her professional life. She has always been inspired by his untiring work ethic, fairness, humility and his ability to create impact in communities. 

Minh Giang grew up in the land of sun and wind in Central Vietnam: Quang Ngai, where she nurtured her personalities of hardworking, tolerant, and always optimistic in the face of life's challenges.

Moving to Ho Chi Minh City, Minh Giang soon encountered the turning point of her life when she joined Navigos Group and spent the next three years as an Executive Search and Selection. She gradually flourished her enthusiasm and passion for connecting teams so she actively participated in "Building Corporate Culture" activities and events as part of the Culture Committee at Navigos.

During the next 12 years, step-by-step, Minh Giang relentlessly transformed and 'expanded' herself, her experience, and her leadership by continuously generating new initiatives to add value to the Mekong Capital team and the companies in their portfolio. Under her leadership, the Talent and Culture (T&C) team is at the core for cultivating the best Employee Experience from recruiting, training, and developing, to team building activities and building corporate culture. Besides that, she actively partners with their investee companies as a COACH and CONSULTANT to cause Senior Leadership Team developing personal leadership and building trust within teams by transforming their communications to unlock their potential for Corporate Culture Transformation.

She is former of Mekong Capital's Partner of Talent and Culture and a member of the Management Committee.

Together with the other co-founders of NEWing, in her next journey, she aims to "Do the best to unleash the potential of Vietnamese". 

Van can be easily recognized by her special enthusiasm to training and working to develop others with full of energy and passion.

Although she has a strong background in marketing, strategy and general management in various industries from financial service to education & manufacturing, her experience with training and education industry was dated back to 2002 when she was working as the Assistant Director of the British Council in Ho Chi Minh City to promote English, British education as well as British culture. Bich Van’s profound understanding of training needs and people development come from her 27 years of training & general management experience, formerly Senior Director & Head of Sales Distribution Training of Prudential Vietnam, Head of Channel Marketing and Productivity of AIA Vietnam. She transformed the Prudential sales training team to become the most influential academy among all the local business units across Vietnam. She trained thousands of sales agents & coached many key agency leaders to lead their teams to outperform. She is a speaker at public and in house training, conferences and seminars.

Bich Van is specialized in Building Training Academy, Developing Training Roadmap, Curriculum & Modules and Train the Trainers. She has developed more than 100 courses in Sales & Recruitment, Building Agency Management System and Culture, Performance Management & Sales Tool, Sales Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Personal Effectiveness, NLP, Need Based Selling, Time Management, Goal Setting & Annual Planning and Review workshop.

She has proven experience in strategy, building team, sales system and culture. Bich Van has led many organizational change initiatives in training, productivity, top seller & top leader development for High Performance system and culture.

 

Ngan’s close friends say, “You can take Ngan out of Nhatrang, but not Nhatrang out of her”. Born in Hanoi, grew up in Nhatrang, Ngan then spent 15 years living overseas; and chose to return to Vietnam in 2012. She is a global citizen, and truly Vietnamese. She carries in her Nhatrang characteristics: simple and sophisticated, gentle and strong.

Ngan’s mother told her “Treat others the way you want to be treated”. When she grew up, she was told “Treat other the way they want to be treated”. Combining the two, Ngan gives honesty and kindness in her relationship with others. She learns to listen in order to understand and help others.

The way Ngan lives is also the way she works. In her position as Managing Director at Ipsos Vietnam, Ngan pays utmost attention to people development. She strongly believes that when leaders look after their staff, the staff are happy to work and thus deliver quality, which makes clients happy and consequently creates business growth. With her Authenticity, Inclusivity and Result-Orientation leadership style, Ngan builds Ipsos Vietnam to be the “Home of Researchers” where employees can be themselves and fully develop their potential. Ninety eight percent of employees at Ipsos Vietnam liked the company culture, according to the 2021 Employee Engagement Survey. During five years 2018-2022, Ipsos moved from the fourth to the second position in customised research market, with 25% growth rate.

Ngan provides mentoring in Vietnam SME 1:1 Mentoring program and works as an Ontological Coach. She skilfully applies a mix of training, mentoring and coaching approaches to help her clients set objectives, enhance self-management ability, build good relationships, and achieve desired outcomes.

Ngan is a keen Mindfulness practitioner who advocates sustainable development.