Keynote lineup

As President of IMD, a position he has held since September 2024, David Bach is focused on making IMD the world’s most impactful business school. Together with his leadership team and the entire IMD community, he is working to broaden and deepen IMD’s global impact through learning innovation, excellence in degree- and executive programs, and applied thought leadership.

As Nestlé Professor of Strategy and Political Economy, Bach helps leaders navigate the myriad political challenges facing business today. A celebrated teacher, his course ‘The End of Globalization?’ received the 2018 Ideas Worth Teaching Award from the Aspen Institute.

Chef Pam (Pichaya Soontornyanakij) was the youngest and first-ever female chef to receive this Michelin Thailand Opening of the Year Award together with 1 Michelin star for Restaurant POTONG.

The MICHELIN Opening of the Year Award is given to Chef Pam and POTONG for the successful opening of a dining venue over the past 12 months, with a creative degustation concept and cuisine approach, which has had an impact on the local gastronomic scene.

Being the first recipient of this special award in Thailand, Chef Pam is recognized for her successful opening of the restaurant, Potong, in the heart of Chinatown. She has renovated her family’s ancestral building that used to be a pharmacy, in spite of trying times during the Covid-19 period. It was the first restaurant of its kind to serve innovative/progressive Thai-Chinese cuisine in Thailand, with a 20-course Tasting Menu, whereby each dish embodies the 5-Element philosophy of “Salt, Acid, Spice, Texture, and Millard Reaction”. The restaurant also won its first Michelin star at the same time.

Kiran Bedi is an Indian social activist who was the first woman to join the Indian Police Service (IPS) and who was instrumental in introducing prison reform in India.

Bedi earned recognition for the work she did as inspector general of prisons, beginning in 1994. In that capacity she reshaped one of the largest prisons in the world—the Tihar prison complex, in Delhi—by addressing the corruption and human rights abuses she found there. She targeted sanitation and nutrition problems at Tihar and also implemented new literacy and drug treatment programs there.

oman Lo is the vice chairman and managing director of Regal Hotels International. She is also the founding managing partner of AlphaTrio Capital, an Asia-focused sustainable technology fund empowering green tech unicorns to provide disruptive solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental challenges; and the founder of the non-profit Institute of Sustainability and Technology, with a mission to nurture ESG talent through executive education and advance the sustainability agenda through interdisciplinary research and international conferences.

Poman Lo is the only person in Hong Kong to receive both the Outstanding Young Person of the World Award and the Hong Kong Outstanding Students Award. She is also the first and only female Asian recipient of the Oslo Business for Peace Award by the Business for Peace Foundation in Norway.