Our Circle event, Traction: How to Find the Best Methods for Gaining New Customers will be held on Tuesday, 6th February 2018.
Meet our mentors:
Mary Covatta, Covatta Communications Limited
As an accomplished creative and brand strategist with over 29 years of experience in Hong Kong and Australasia and with her growing reputation and network Mary established Covatta Communications Limited in 2002. An international creative, branding and marketing communications firm headquartered in Hong Kong. Since its establishment, Covatta Communications has launched over 180 brands
and developed and implemented over 100 strategic marketing and communications programmes for its growing list of clients.
Mary has a strong Asian and international background in strategic brand and marketing communications advice and business management. Mary assists establishing and advising a number of SME start-ups and multinational companies whilst maintaining influential connections worldwide, including Hong Kong, where Mary has been assisting private enterprises and public entities since 1996.
Mary currently holds directorships and select advisory roles in various companies both in Hong Kong and internationally. Mary currently holds directorships and select advisory roles including being on the Board at WEN and recently appointed Chairwoman of City University, Departmental Advisory Committee (DAC) from 2017 – 2020.
Sonalie Figueiras, Green Queen
Sonalie Figueiras is the founder and editor-in-chief of Green Queen, Hong Kong’s largest health and wellness media platform and the founder and CEO of Ekowarehouse, the global sourcing platform for certified organic products. With over a decade of experience in publishing, SEO, digital marketing, organic trade and health journalism, she is a wellness industry veteran with a keen eye for market trends and a regular on the speaking circuit.
Joanna Hotung, KG Group
Joanna founded Kids’ Gallery in 1996, inspired by her desire for a more creative and enquiry-based education for her own children. The KG Group – Kids’ Gallery, Star English, Face Productions, and Mills International Preschool – has seen over 60,000 young people pass through its doors, and alumni are studying at prestigious universities or working in a wide range of fields worldwide.
Joanna has a BA (Hons) from London University, an MBA from Warwick University, and is a Licentiate of Trinity College London. She is Chairperson Emeritus of Youth Diabetes Action, and has held Board positions at Playright Children’s Play Association, Hong Kong Ballet, Bring Me A Book, and The Women’s Foundation Entrepreneurs Network.
Among other awards, she is the winner of the AmCham Women of Influence Entrepreneur Award and the SCMP Women of Our Time Award.
Liz Search, Mud Pies Education Limited
Liz is an experienced managing director who started out in a corporate environment before starting her own education business ten years ago. Her first dip into sales came as a hard up student where she accepted a job to sell photo shoots for babies and without any training absolutely nailed it.
While Liz worked for Barclays in the UK, she was responsible for sales and service in the retail sector, managing teams of sales staff through training and support to achieve their sales targets. Liz won a prestigious “Gold” award from Barclays for her performance in her role. Her dedication in training, product and service knowledge and to have her teams at the top, meant that Liz and her teams consistently performed well. Thanks to Liz’s performance and reputation, she was often sent in to trouble shoot poor performing areas and to work with teams to turn sales and service performance around.
For ten years, Liz has run her own business and has used the skills she learned during her days in a corporate environment and applied them to business. Liz believes that customer service and sales =$$$ and that is an important part of what is needed to run a company. Liz is delighted to share some tips for securing sales helping entrepreneurs to close sales and ramp up $$$.
Tracy Turo, Green Queen
Tracy Turo is a world-class data scientist with a passion for data-led decision-making. She is the co-founder of Green Queen and Ekowarehouse and among many other things, is responsible for digital campaigns and analytics across all the group’s properties, often hitting 100% conversion rates. She is Google Partner certified in Adwords and Analytics.
