Leanne Cutts is Vice President, Marketing for Kraft Foods Asia Pacific Region, based in Singapore. She is responsible for driving the growth of the gum, candy, and powdered beverages categories as well as leading consumer insights & analytics and driving marketing excellence in the region.

Leanne joined Kraft Foods in July 2011. A veteran in the FMCG industry, Leanne has over 20 years of deep marketing and general management experience, having held a number of significant positions across Asia Pacific prior to joining Kraft Foods. She was previously with GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSKCH) in Hong Kong, where she was responsible for the Consumer Healthcare business in North Asia including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam and the China Nutritionals business. The company’s well-known brands included Panadol, Sensodyne, Scott’s, Lucozade, Ribena and Horlicks, and the business enjoyed consecutive years of double-digit growth.

Prior to Hong Kong, Leanne was Marketing Director of GSK Consumer Healthcare in India, responsible for developing marketing plans, having previously served the  Nutritionals Global Category Management team, operating worldwide, including India, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mexico and the Caribbean as well as UK and Ireland.

Leanne began her career with GSKCH in Australia where she worked across the sales and marketing divisions on analgesics and nutritional foods. Prior to joining GSKCH she worked with Unilever in the ice cream division across its entire range of products such as Magnum and Cornetto.

Leanne has a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management, University of NSW.

Married with a daughter, Leanne enjoys cooking and travelling, preferably combining both!

Visit website

Samir is currently working at Brand Finance Singapore as a Managing Director. In this role Samir drives the business verticals including analytics, brand strategy, brand valuation, franchise strategy, brand scorecards etc across client segments and B2B environment. He has previously worked in various senior strategy roles including a Strategic Global Brand Marketing & Communications at Standard Charterd Bank in Singapore.

As a subject matter expert in brand management and an external speaker at global forums, Samir has contributed to thought leadership articles and have been featured in several regional and local publications. Samir is also a visiting faculty member and a guest lecturer for the executive MBA course at presitgeous MBA institutes.

Christian is an experienced lP and brand specialist. As an Ex-Standard Charterd Bank head of Group Brand Licensing he has been involved with negotiating for Intellectual  Property. He has extensive experience in applying that expertise to legal IP field, brand licensing, ecommerce, banking, government and regulatory relations - particular specialisms in luxury goods, consumer banking products, technology and operations, compliance, risk and strategic brand management, with demonstrative expertise in European and Asian global markets. Christian is also an external speaker and has spoken at previous Brand Finance forums.

David is the CEO and founder of Brand Finance plc, the leading independent brand valuation consultancy. David qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London. He has worked in the area of branded business, brand and intangible asset valuation since 1991 and since January 1995 has specialised entirely in this area. David has represented the British Standards institute on the International Standards Committee working party on the standardisation of brand valuation methods and practices, whose standard (ISO 10668) is due to be published in early 2010.

David is a passionate writer and has written many articles for the marketing and financial press on branded businesses and brand valuation and is the author of numerous publications. He also lectures on the subject of branded business, brand and intangible asset valuation at many of the leading business schools around the world.

Visit website

Professor Rajendra Srivastava is Provost and Deputy President, Singapore Management University. A leading authority on the impact of marketing on business performance, he is frequently invited as a keynote speaker on topics such marketing metrics, value of market-based intangible assets (brands, channels) and management of growth and risk. His research contributions, assessing the impact of marketing strategy and financial performance, are used globally to examining marketing productivity. His work linking market-based assets and market-facing processes to shareholder value in the Journal of Marketing received both the 1998 Maynard Award for the article judged to contribute most to the development of theory in marketing and the MSI/Paul Root Award for the article judged to contribute most to the practice of marketing—the only time a single article has won both awards – as well as the AMA/Sheth Foundation Award for long-term impact on marketing.

A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, he received his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. He has provided executive training and consultancy services for companies spanning North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.