Dieter Turowski

Dieter has been an investment banker with Morgan Stanley for 37 years, where he has worked in six different offices (Toronto, New York, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Menlo Park), and advised clients on over 400 M&A and financing transactions. Particular areas of focus include technology, M&A, private equity, and energy transition. He earned his BASc in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and his MBA at Harvard University. In addition to U-GO, Dieter also sits on the Asia Business Leaders Advisory Council, and on the Asia-Pacific Board of Room to Read.

Brian Brenner

Brian Brenner is driven by a deep commitment to helping others, whether it’s supporting his family, his community, or the companies he serves. A devoted husband and father of three, Brian finds joy in life’s small moments, staying active, and giving back. In addition to supporting U-GO University, he serves on the board of the Irvine Valley College Foundation.

Professionally, Brian brings nearly 30 years of experience in commercial real estate globally.  His focus is supporting companies with life sciences and advanced manufacturing navigating complex needs like cGMP facilities, lab spaces, and industrial hubs and has completed over 600 projects across 100+ global markets.  

Brian’s global perspective and dedication to building relationships sets him apart. Whether he’s helping a biotech company expand or mentoring future leaders, Brian is motivated by a genuine desire to make a positive impact—both professionally and personally.

Catherine Rainey

Catherine Rainey was a Founding Partner of Sanderson Asset Management, an active, value manager of international equities.  Catherine has worked within equities for almost 30 years, having started her career as a sell-side analyst in Hong Kong at G.K. Goh Securities. Prior to this, she taught English in Taiwan to a wide range of students - from kindergarteners to business executives.

Her primary non-profit involvement has been both in health, having served on the Investment Committee of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, and in the advancement of education and literacy.  She has established libraries in an orphanage in Mongolia and been an active supporter of literacy programs throughout Asia. She believes strongly in the transformational power of education; U-GO has the potential to unlock educational opportunities for generations of young women, increasing access to rewarding career paths and therefore more social and economic mobility.  Catherine is looking forward to using her professional and non-profit experience to promote U-GO’s vision.

Thomas Crampton

With a lifelong commitment to education and social impact, Thomas Crampton has co-founded and served on the boards of numerous non-profits, many focused on expanding access to education for underserved and underprivileged communities.

Professionally, Thomas helps venture-backed startups and growth-stage companies achieve strategic growth by attracting follow-on capital, preparing for public listing, and navigating complex market challenges.

A former globe-trotting foreign correspondent with The New York Times, Thomas also held global leadership roles at Ogilvy & Mather and Edelman, where he developed deep expertise in storytelling, marketing, and corporate strategy. More recently, he led Corporate Affairs for several innovative startups, including a cutting-edge biotech company that achieved unicorn status in listing on Nasdaq. 

His experience in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors positions him to champion U-GO’s vision of unlocking educational opportunities for young women around the world.

Thuy-Tien Crampton

Thuy-Tien Crampton brings a unique blend of creative entrepreneurship and strategic expertise to the board of U-GO. 

She founded and served as Creative Director of La Petite Caravane, a French children’s clothing brand celebrated for its vintage-inspired, limited-edition designs crafted from hand-picked fabrics that reflect her passion for creativity and craftsmanship.

Before founding La Petite Caravane, Thuy-Tien built a successful global career in advertising, serving as Regional Strategic Planning Director for BBDO China and holding strategic planning roles at BETC EURO RSCG and CLM BBDO in Paris. 

Her expertise in storytelling, brand strategy and engagement, as well as her passion for education, makes her a valuable advocate for U-GO’s mission to empower ambitious young women in low-income countries to achieve their higher education goals.

Sam Guinness

Sam and Natasha Guinness organized their first London event at a very cool Mayfair art gallery just a few months after joining our UK Board. Talk about GSD!! Sam is a former Hong Kong hedge fund executive who is now with Goldman Sachs in London. Natassha (GTash) is a jewelry designer and is passionate about charity work, especially for children, and has experience working with children's charities. They have two young boys and like many of us want them to grow up with an appreciation for the value of education.

Raj Srinivasan

Raj was born and raised in Madras (now Chennai), India and trained as a chartered accountant. He has spent his career around the globe. First, with Ernst & Young in Bahrain, then Hemisphere Management in Bermuda and Boston, Citibank in Bermuda and Dublin and for the last 14 years with Morgan Stanley in London and Hong Kong. He is currently on the Board of Morgan Stanley Fund Services UK Limited and the Head of Fund Services. As many of U-GO Boards are “spouse friendly”, he joined at the invitation of his wife, Alicia Eastman, a founding member of the UK Board. 

Natasha Guinness

Natasha Guinness lives in Chiswick, London and is a jewellery designer. She is married to Samuel Guinness and they have two boys; Rory aged 4 and Ivo aged 3. Their kids love sport, adventure and learning like their parents. 

Tasha has always loved travel and experiencing different cultures from an early age since her mother is Sri Lankan they used to travel far afield regularly as a family. This sparked her to study Spanish and Business at Newcastle University where she spent a year living abroad in South America, mainly Argentina, learning Spanish at the University of Buenos Aires and working in Fundacion Agreste charity helping underprivileged children to promote education in sustainable development in the environment, economy and social spaces. 

After university she went on to train in Johannesburg, South Africa as a steel trader and subsequently got posted to Hong Kong where she lived for nearly 11 years, where she met Sam and they had Rory. 

She is very proud to have been involved with the first 10x10 charity event in Hong Kong on the sponsorship committee where more than HKD 200,000 was raised for the three participating local charities; Food Angel, Mother’s Choice and ChickenSoup Foundation. Also during her time in Hong Kong Tasha trained at Mother’s Choice charity which helps pregnant women, babies and children without family support. 

Hong Kong is where she started her first jewellery design company before moving back to the UK and where she set up another business. Tasha has always been very passionate about charity work, especially to do with children, and could not be more aligned with U-GO as her kids have just started education. She is very much looking forward to working with U-GO to help women in developing countries around the world get access to university and to change their lives and countries for the better.

Yasemin Okur

Yasemin Okur is a seasoned global leader in healthcare with over 25 years of experience. She currently serves as a senior advisor to private equity and growth capital firms, leveraging her expertise in accelerated growth, business turnarounds, and organizational transformation to empower businesses and foster innovation.

A firm believer in the transformative power of education, Yasemin is passionate about using her professional experience and insights to create opportunities for young women worldwide. She is dedicated to helping them access education and build brighter futures—not only for themselves but also for their families and communities. 

Born in Turkey, Yasemin has worked extensively across Europe and is now based in Singapore. As a global citizen, she looks forward to creating meaningful, positive change in underserved societies through U-GO.

She is a proud mother of two and is married to Batuhan Okur, a tech entrepreneur and founder of Rapsodo, a global leader in sports performance tracking technologies for golf and baseball.

Phalgun Raju

Phalgun is an early-stage investor based in Singapore. She is a Kauffman Fellow and was named an Asia 21 Young Leader by the Asia Society. She was a Member of the Board for Room to Read ASEAN and the Global Council of The Julliard School. 

Phalgun is also the Chairman and Co-Founder of Morph.org an education initiative. In 2015, Morph started The Ramanujan Project to find and fund underprivileged genius students from emerging markets for top programs in the USA. In partnership with PROMYS and IISc they launched the PROMYS India campus for mathematics in 2022. Morph.org has partnered with additional world-class educational institutions to provide opportunities for pre-university geniuses, including RSI for science, Iowa Writer’s Workshop for writing, and Juilliard for music.

Phalgun was previously Vice President and General Manager at InMobi, a Softbank-backed unicorn startup, building and scaling their Global Programmatic and Asia businesses. A leader in the mobile technology industry, Phalgun was named to Business Insider’s Most Powerful Women in Mobile Advertising. Phalgun and her team’s work was covered in the media such as The Wall Street Journal and received numerous industry awards including the MMA Smarties and Mobex. She was on the Asia Board of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum trade association.

Prior to InMobi, Phalgun held senior business leadership roles in the US at Google and Nokia. Earlier at McKinsey & Company, Phalgun advised technology and industrial F500 companies in growth, and sales and marketing.

Phalgun has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh where she graduated early.

Juliet Zhu

Juliet Zhu is a VC-turned-operator who joined Carsome - the leading Auto E-commerce platform in Southeast Asia - and helped scale it 10X to a billion-dollar business (by revenue and valuation) as its CFO and later Group President. She brings extensive experience in growth strategy and capital planning, having worked as a VC investor across China, India and Southeast Asia. Previously, Juliet led the SEA investment team in Fosun RZ Capital to build its overseas portfolio of digitally enabled consumer brands. Prior to a life in venture capital, Juliet was a hedge fund manager focusing on the technology, media, and telecom (TMT) space.

She moved from China to Singapore on a scholarship at the age of 15 and experienced first hand how education changed her world and life. As a new Mom with a 6-month-old daughter, she is increasingly thinking about how she can make an impact on the world that she will grow up in and is extremely excited to be involved in the U-GO mission.

Josh Lewin and Kaavya Viswanathan

Kaavya and Josh are thrilled to be a part of the U-GO family, and to help more women around the world access higher education.

For 10 years, Kaavya has been a human rights attorney focused on issues surrounding migration and refugee rights. She was previously the Director of Legal Services at The Door, a New York City non-profit serving low-income youth, where she led a team of fifty+ in representing immigrant youth, including Afghan minors, children separated from their parents, and those held in immigration detention. Currently, she is a writer / consultant for Unheard, a media startup that focuses attention on human rights issues through long-form storytelling.

Josh recently left Bridgewater Associates, after a 14-year career that included moving to Asia to help launch Bridgewater’s Singapore office. As a Portfolio Strategist, he worked with institutional investors around the world to share Bridgewater’s thinking on global markets and has directed research for institutional investors on portfolio construction, asset liability management and risk management.

Josh and Kaavya have two young sons – Nikhil and Ashok – and are excited to continue exploring Asia with their family. They firmly believe that so many of their opportunities will be due to circumstances beyond their control: the country in which they were born, the stability of home life, and the financial security of their parents. They were immediately drawn to U-GO as a highly scalable opportunity to dismantle those barriers for other young people.

Pamela Hsu Phua

Pamela Hsu Phua brings over 25 years of leadership experience in private wealth management. Most recently, she served as Chief Executive Officer Asia at VP Bank AG. Previously, she was Managing Director at Pictet Wealth Management and Julius Baer, focusing on single and multi-family offices across Asia. Pamela is currently a Director at Matrix Global Investments Ltd, a private multi-asset financial asset management platform.

Pamela holds a Bachelor of Business Administration with double majors in Finance and International Business from the National University of Singapore. She speaks English and Mandarin.

Beyond her professional achievements, Pamela is deeply committed to philanthropy and education. Since 2006, she has served on global boards dedicated to supporting children and young adults in need, as well as addressing extreme poverty in Asia.

As a U-GO Advisory Board member, Pamela leverages her expertise and passion to empower young women from low-income countries to pursue higher education. She firmly believes education creates opportunities and drives lasting impact for communities.

John Hsu

John Hsu brings extensive experience in investment management and family business operations as a director of the Hsu family’s family office, OSS Capital, and Chief Investment Officer of Matrix Global Investments, a private multi-asset investment platform.  He serves as Chairman of his family’s charitable foundation, where he actively supports philanthropic initiatives.

John has held various leadership roles through the decades, including as a Director of Atlas Corporation for 15 years until its privatization in 2023, and as Partner at Ajia Partners in Hong Kong.

John’s family has a distinguished legacy of six generations as owners and operators of bulkers, tankers, and specialized ships, including Sincere Navigation Corp. and Oak Maritime Group.  

John holds a B.A. from Colgate University and an MBA from Columbia University. He is fluent in English, Japanese, and Mandarin.

As a U-GO Advisory Board member, John is committed to fostering access to education for young women from low-income countries. He believes education is a powerful tool for driving personal growth and creating opportunities for future success.

Jennifer Doherty

Jennifer Doherty is a seasoned professional with a rich background in the Financial Services sector. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she spent a decade living in London before relocating to Singapore in 2017. Currently the Head of Transformation for Standard Chartered’s Transaction Bank, Jennifer brings over 20 years of industry experience to her role.

In addition to her responsibilities at Standard Chartered, Jennifer serves as a non-executive director on various boards and is an active member of the Corporate and Institutional Banks D&I (Diversity and Inclusion) council. Her expertise lies in Transaction Banking, where she has held numerous positions focusing on strategy development and delivery. Jennifer's extensive experience also includes leveraging technology to effectively manage and deliver product portfolios, as well as creating tailor-made solutions for corporate and institutional clients.

Beyond her professional accomplishments, Jennifer is deeply passionate about mentoring and supporting others in their professional growth. She actively engages in mentoring programs, providing guidance and sharing her knowledge with aspiring professionals. Jennifer understands the importance of empowering and developing talent, and she actively contributes to fostering a culture of mentorship within her organizations.

With her vast experience and dedication to mentorship, Jennifer continues to make a significant impact in the Financial Services sector.

Carrie Burke

Carrie Burke is a seasoned finance professional with nearly two decades of experience in banking and asset management. She has held senior leadership roles at Deutsche Bank and Barclays and most recently co-founded one of Singapore’s top Asia macro hedge funds, serving as Chief Risk Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Originally from China, she studied in the U.S. before making Singapore her home. A strong believer in the transformative power of education, Carrie is passionate about empowering underprivileged  young women through university scholarships and is thrilled to serve on the global and Singapore boards of U-GO.

Nicholas Nash

Nicholas A. Nash is the Managing Partner and a co-founder of Asia Partners.

Prior to Asia Partners, Mr. Nash was the Group President of Sea, Greater Southeast Asia’s leading internet company with a ~67Bn market cap, from 2014 to 2025. Mr. Nash led Sea’s landmark initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SE), which raised approximately $1 billion of primary capital and which was the largest ever U.S. IPO of a company from Southeast Asia.

Mr. Nash joined Sea after more than a decade with General Atlantic (GA) as the co-founder and head of GA’s Southeast Asia business. Three of Mr. Nash’s successful investments while with General Atlantic are now multi-billion dollar NYSE publicly traded companies. Prior to GA, Mr. Nash was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York.

Mr. Nash was a member of the World Economic Forum’s ASEAN Regional Strategy Group from 2017-2018, is a member of the global Kauffman Society for leadership in venture capital, is a member of the Young Presidents Organization, and is a board member of Endeavor Indonesia, U-GO & Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.

He received an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2007, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in Chemistry and Physics, magna cum laude, in 2000.

Walden Chu

Walden is a faith-driven entrepreneur that seeks to put God’s love in action and currently leads a diversified portfolio of businesses across Southeast Asia with interests spanning environmental services, food & beverage retail, and sustainable agriculture. Walden is committed to the virtue of pouring ourselves out courageously and completely for those left behind, and prior to U-GO, has served in varying leadership roles for the Real Life Foundation, Habitat for Humanity Philippines, the Solar Village Foundation, and the Christian Education Assistance Foundation.

Walden received his BBA in Finance and Accounting with distinction from the University of Michigan, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder.

Carmina Bayombong

Carmina is the CEO and Founder of InvestEd.ph, a pioneering platform providing education loans and resources to 30 million Filipino Gen Zs. Under her leadership, InvestEd has raised $6 million in funding and developed the Philippines’ most accurate AI for Gen Z borrowers, achieving the highest repayment rates in the region. The company’s AI has also enabled white-label education financing, talent recruitment, and Gen Z product placements for employers and financial institutions. A global leader in youth lending, Carmina conducted the world’s most comprehensive study in the field and throughout her career has raised over $10 million for impact-driven ventures in developing markets. She has trained 10,000+ young individuals across Southeast Asia on topics such as entrepreneurship and financial literacy. 

Recognized for her impact, she is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, an Obama Asia Pacific Leader, a Women of the Future awardee, and a two-time Cartier Women’s Initiative CEO awardee. The Philippine government also named her an Outstanding Woman in the Nation’s Service.

Arianne Kader-Cu

Arianne Kader-Cu, or Ari, has somehow survived over 15 years in the fast-paced world of e-commerce and digital media, all thanks to the amazing teams she's been lucky enough to work with. Born and raised in California, she holds a master's in Business from Ateneo Graduate School (but don’t quiz her on it). Ari was part of the early days at Zalora Philippines and helped launch a marketplace model for Global Fashion Group in 2015, though she’ll be the first to say it was definitely a group effort. In 2017, she jumped into the online streaming world with PCCW Hong Kong, pioneering Korean content in Asia and launching Viu Philippines. In 2022, she became the COO at kumu, where she worked with an incredible team to make the platform one of the safest social spaces online. She’s passionate about encouraging Filipinos to come home and help build the nation. Oh, and in 2020, she somehow made it onto Robert Walters' list of Top 20 Women Who Inspire in Southeast Asia—but she swears it was a typo! Ask her about her passion for working with teams, her 2 children, or just surviving the daily grind!