DAVID MERRITT
Executive Editor, Asia Pacific
David Merritt is the Executive Editor for Bloomberg News based in Hong Kong, responsible for the coverage of the Asia Pacific region. He oversees 24 bureaus and more than 500 reporters, editors and managers.
Since joining Bloomberg in 2000, Merritt held various positions prior to his current role including Managing Editor for the South Asia region, leader for the European stocks, speed desk, general assignment and headlines teams and a headlines editor. His first three years at Bloomberg were spent in sales, where he helped to manage the Merrill Lynch account in London before selling Bloomberg terminals to clients in Amsterdam and across the Netherlands.
Prior to joining Bloomberg, Merritt achieved a first class degree in English from Christ Church, Oxford University.
VIVIAN KWOK
Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg Businessweek (Chinese)
彭博商業周刊 / 中文版
Vivian Kwok is the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Publisher of Bloomberg Businessweek (Chinese) 彭博商業周刊 / 中文版 , a Chinese biweekly which was launched in June 2013 and built on the agreement between Bloomberg Businessweek and Hong Kong-listed Modern Media.
Prior to her existing role with Bloomberg Businessweek (Chinese), Vivian was Deputy Editor-in-Chief with Next Magazine, Hong Kong’s highest circulation news weekly, overseeing two teams of journalists covering Greater China.
Before that, Vivian spent a year with the South China Morning Post where she broke front-page investigative stories on university scandals, land deals, and a secret agreement between the Hong Kong government and developers. Her series about private clubs in Hong Kong won a Society of Publishers in Asia award for investigative reporting in 2011.
From 2006 to 2009, Vivian was the News Editor with Forbes.com in Hong Kong. She wrote on mergers and acquisitions, pollution and corruption, and financial markets across Asia.
Vivian has a BSSc in Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a MJ in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong.
YUMIKO ONO
Asia Digital Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Yumiko Ono is the Asia digital editor for The Wall Street Journal, overseeing the video and social media teams in the region and supporting the Journal’s efforts to expand its readership and presence across Asia.
Ms. Ono has been a journalist in Asia and the U.S. for over 25 years. She worked as a reporter in Tokyo and New York, and became bureau chief for Tokyo and Seoul in 2003. In 2009, she launched WSJ’s Japanese-language website and was appointed managing editor. In 2014, she moved to Hong Kong to become Asia audience engagement editor, responsible for driving subscriber outreach and retention, and attracting new audiences in the region. She has been in her current role since September 2015.
Ms. Ono grew up in Tokyo, New York and London, and has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Tsukuba in Japan.
BRIAN RHOADS
Managing Editor, South China Morning Post
Brian Rhoads has worked for more than 25 years as a journalist in China and the United States. He joined the South China Morning in September 2012 and has served as Managing Editor at the Hong Kong-based newspaper for more than four years. Before that, he worked for 16 years at Reuters, leading news coverage across Greater China for much of his tenure with the international news agency. He served as Reuters Managing Editor for the Americas in New York from 2008 to 2010 before moving to Hong Kong as Managing Editor for Asia.
Brian reported for Reuters from China from 2000 to 2008. As bureau chief in Beijing, he covered the Chinese leadership transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao,China’s growing economic and diplomatic clout, the North Korean nuclear crisis and the Beijing Olympic Games. He garnered two interviews for Reuters with Premier Wen Jiabao – in 2004 and 2006. Brian was Reuters Shanghai bureau chief from 2000 to 2001, leading the team reporting on China’s developing financial markets.
Brian joined Reuters in 1996 as a subeditor on the Asia production desk, first serving in Hong Kong and later Singapore. He previously worked on newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area as a staff writer or correspondent for five years. He spent 1988 to 1990 teaching English in China and learning Mandarin. Brian holds a BA in political science from Stanford University. He is married and has one son.
ANNE MARIE ROANTREE
Bureau Chief, Hong Kong, Reuters News
Anne Marie formally took on the bureau chief role at Reuters in Hong Kong in the spring of 2014, having helped run the bureau from mid-2012 as chief correspondent and acting bureau chief. In her first year as bureau chief, she oversaw award-winning coverage of the pro-democracy protests that paralysed parts of the city. She joined Reuters in Singapore in 2002 as part of the newly established online desk, having worked at the Irish Times in Dublin and South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
S.K. WITCHER – CHAIR
Deputy Asia Editor, The New York Times
S.K. Witcher is Deputy Asia Editor of The New York Times. She began her career in Hong Kong and spent more than three decades with The Wall Street Journal as a foreign correspondent and senior editor working in Asia, the U.S., Latin America and Australia covering a diverse range of topics, including international banking and the Latin American debt crisis, for which she was nominated as part of a team for the Pulitzer Prize.
Ms. Witcher was Assistant Managing Editor of the WSJ in Hong Kong from 2002 to 2005, responsible for running the newsroom. From 2006 to 2010, she was editor of Weekend Journal Asia, a weekly lifestyle magazine, winning several awards. Among them was the 2008 Society of Publishers in Asia award for Excellence in Magazine Front Cover Design.
Prior to joining The New York Times in 2013, she was a writing coach and senior editor in charge of business coverage at The South China Morning Post.
She has a BA in English from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia.
WANG FENG
Editor in Chief, FTChinese.com
Wang Feng has worked for the Financial Times as Editor in Chief of FTChinese.com since April 2015. Prior to the FT, he was the editor of scmp.com, the online edition of the South China Morning Post, after moving to Hong Kong from Beijing in 2012. He was the founding editor of cn.reuters.com, the Chinese language financial news site of Reuters, and Editor in Charge of Reuters Chinese News service. He had also worked as a journalists for various Chinese news organisations including Caijing Magazine in Beijing. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.
YIN-CHUEN WU
President, CommonWealth Magazine
Yin-Chuen Wu has 32 years of journalistic experience working in CommonWealth Magazine, Taiwan, covering subjects from technology, political economics, nations’ competitiveness, to healthcare system. She’s led CommonWealth Magazine to win international and domestic prestigious honours within her service as the Managing Editor of CommonWealth Magazine since 2008, including the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) and Golden Tripod Award, Vivian Wu Journalism Award, and Excellent Journalism Award in Taiwan.
From 1995-2011, she’s conducted 5 TV documentaries featuring the political economic, educational, and environmental development of Taiwan (1995: “The Making of A Little Dragon” 4-hour documentary ; 1996: “Environmental Taiwan” 5-hour documentary ; 1997: ”Impact 1997 of Hong Kong Takeover” 1/2 hour documentary ; 1997: “The Rising Generation” 6.5-hour documentary ; 2011: “Beautiful Formosa – The Road Less Traveled” 3.3-hour documentary).
Born in Taiwan, Wu has a BA in Journalism from National Chengchi University of Taiwan; and a MA in Asian Studies from University of California, Berkeley, of the United States.
DR. JEFFREY TIMMERMANS – HEAD OF JUDGES
Associate Professor of Practice
Director, Bachelor of Journalism programme
Journalism & Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong
Jeffrey Timmermans is an associate professor and director of the undergraduate journalism programme at The University of Hong Kong. He has more than two decades of experience in Asia as a financial journalist and journalism educator, having worked as a reporter in Tokyo for The Wall Street Journal and as a managing editor for Dow Jones Newswires in Hong Kong and Singapore. He also worked for Bain & Company, leading the global strategy consulting firm’s public-relations efforts in Asia, before joining the faculty of HKU’s Journalism & Media Studies Centre in 2008. Jeffrey is a former governor of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong and has served as Head of Judges of the SOPA Awards since 2014. He holds a BA in Asian Studies from Colgate University, a MS in Journalism from Columbia University, and a PhD from The University of Hong Kong.
DR. KING-WA FU – DEPUTY HEAD OF JUDGES
Associate Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong
Dr. King-wa Fu is an Associate Professor at The University of Hong Kong’s Journalism & Media Studies Centre (JMSC). His research focuses on the media’s influence on mental health/suicide, health communication, research method, measurement, and statistics in journalism. He has a PhD from the JMSC, a MA in Social Sciences and a MPhil in Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained an undergraduate degree in Engineering from HKU. He was a journalist at the Hong Kong Economic Journal. His CV can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/fukingwa/.