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Our investing team

We are a close-knit team of venture, investments and entrepreneurial scale-up experienced hands who have worked at Bell Lab, McKinsey, Motorola, Philips, and have helped a series of younger and older startups that received funding from the likes of Oak Investment Partners and Qiming Ventures and with IPO exits as well as acquisition by companies such as Siemens, Vestas, and BBC.

Brought together by our founder and Managing Partner, Sylvia Chan, the team shares a mission in helping committed entrepreneurial teams build successful companies.

Everyone on the team has been a founder himself or herself and / or been part of founding teams and often in companies during their high growth phases in the process of which become part of the creation of new industries.  Every one of our Operating Partners has been successful scale-up CEOs; our domain expertise, track records and long-established relationships are in technology, energy, infrastructure, engineering, telecom and industrials.

Our experience includes helping a company scale from zero to 51% market share, making multiple-time investment returns to investors, and backing an industry early as well as making successful contrarian investment calls.

Catherine Cao is an Investment Partner and member of the Investment Committee.  Catherine has overseen many investments over the last 20 years, first as partner at Tsing Capital and more recently Managing Director of LESS Limited, a direct and fund of funds investor in the sustainable technologies area.  Her prior experience is in strategy, finance, marketing at IBM, Motorola, and startups in both China and the US. 

Her Board experience include Longmen Group, LDK Solar, Mobius Technology; she graduated with a B.S. from Beijing University, MBA from Duke University, and PhD in Biochemistry from Northwestern University.

Irene Chan is an Investment Partner who brings 20+ years’ experience in a wide range of geotechnical related fields as engineer and project manager, with a breadth of experience in major and pioneering construction and infrastructure projects across 7 countries in Asia.

Irene is highly skilled in the delivery and management of major projects, member of the Institute of Engineers Australia, and holder of a combined Engineering and Arts degree from Monash University and a Masters degree in Geotechnical Engineering from UNSW.  She has led a number of highly successful investments from her base in our Sydney office. 

Sylvia Chan is founder and Managing Partner of Empower Ventures. Prior to joining the venture investing industry, Sylvia was an equity analyst and headed up a sector team at Macquarie Bank based in Hong Kong advising large global institutional investment managers on Asian energy and infrastructure and clean technologies and was one of the first to initiate investment research in Asia in cleantech.  Prior to that, she was involved in the set-up of some of the earliest energy infrastructure funds and spoke widely about infrastructure as an asset class.

Sylvia also spent 8 years in strategy consulting including at McKinsey & Co, KPMG, and her own consulting firm, leading and managing project teams that helped companies in various stages of their growth and development (including high-growth technology-driven "scale-up" companies).  Sylvia graduated with a "double first" from Trinity College, University of Cambridge where she won a number of prizes and also obtained her PhD.  See also, www.cleanandsmartvc.com/about

Edward Choi is an Investment Partner who brings almost 20 years of investment and portfolio management experience across public and private markets, including eight in public equity (long-only and long/short)  and eight years in private equity (both venture capital and private equity).

He brings a consistent alpha-generating track record as a listed equities portfolio manager, and his area of expertise on Greater China but with pan-Asia exposure and cross-global reference, as well as a wide sector coverage spanning Broader Industrials including renewables, materials, and manufacturing.

Edward is also a McKinsey alum; he was on Dean’s list at Cornell, where he graduated with a dual degree in Operational Research and Industrial Engineering and Economics. 

Dr Chiiming Kao, Operating Partner, is a three-
time founder-CEO of venture and private equity-backed technology companies (wireless gateway systems, mobile network switching systems) that grew international operations, and brings a super-strong experience growing young companies to 200+ employees.

Chiiming is based in the Silicon Valley; he is a highly skilled and much-valued all-round CEO mentor who also serves on the board of a number of young companies and teaches entrepreneurship.  His earlier career was as an engineer at AT&T Bell Labs, where he is owner of a number of patents, and he is a PhD in Electrical Engineer.