View speaker details

Sophia is a director in the Shanghai office with Advention Business Partners, a French-headquartered strategy consulting firm. In this capacity, she has developed expertise in serving a range of Western multinational clients in establishing and growing their operations in China, as well as Chinese clients investing abroad, particularly in Europe. In addition to directly assisting European firms, her work has also spanned to advising Chinese companies in the industry with their businesses abroad, following the trend of the “One Belt One Road” policy, as well advising private equity firms on their potential investments in this field. Through her work, she has built a good understanding on the needs of domestic companies and MNCs in China, including an awareness of the challenges they face and strategies for overcoming these.

Prior to joining Advention in 2015, she worked in real estate development business for years, undertaking a wide range of roles that has afforded her genuine exposure to the inner workings of China’s construction industry.

Sophia is also a certified New York lawyer. She received her education in both China and the U.S., and hold an LLM degree from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

View speaker details

Rui Chen is a key member of Alibaba Cloud US team and focuses on helping MNC customers to plan and implement IT strategy to power up business in APAC. He has been with Alibaba Group for 10 years, serving different business units including Taobao, Alimama and Alibaba Cloud and having extensive experience in from software development to enterprise architecture. Rui has been working with customers and patterns across multiple vertical industries, helping them to innovate and succeed in digital transformation. Before Alibaba, Rui worked as a Principle Member of Technical Staff at Oracle US.

View speaker details

Jens Ewert, a Senior Partner with Deloitte China, has over 30 years of working experience in the professional services, based in Shanghai since end 2002 – he has been a member of Deloitte China Eastern Region Management team since then. Jens is the national leader for Deloitte China Life Science & Health Care Industry, leading a dedicated industry team comprising over 1000+ partners and professionals. He also covers our full range of multidisciplinary services, from consulting, risk & financial & tax advisory and audit & assurance, offering to Multinational Clients in China.
Jens has received the ‘Magnolia Silver Award’ from the Shanghai Government in September 2021, recognizing foreign business leaders for their special and outstanding contribution to the City’s development. He is also a Board member at the EUCCC Shanghai and the National Vice-Chair of the Investment Working group at the EU Chamber in China.
Prior to moving to China, he has been working in numerous countries always in professional services, such as France, Hungary, Vietnam and Indonesia. He hold a Master degree from University Paris X Dauphine in Business & Finance and a Diploma of Political Science from Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. He also attended numerous executive programs at IMD and Insead. He is married to Christine and calls France his home.

View speaker details

Carrie is a Shanghai-based Partner focuses on shareholder and investor value creation ranging from restructuring low performing assets to reinvigorating growth through business model transformation. In the last 13 years across US and China, Carrie has advised pharma, med tech, and services companies on critical strategic challenges such as capability building for white space opportunities across the ecosystem, innovation of core business operating model, market entry and competitive strategy for China market growth.

Carrie graduated from Wuhan University with a Bachelor degree in Economics. She earned her Master in Finance from University of Birmingham (UK) and MBA degree from UCLA (US).

View speaker details

Pius S. Hornstein, MSc, PhD, is General Manager General Medicines and Country Lead, Sanofi China. Since March 2019, he leads over 8000 Sanofi China people who focus on introducing more innovative products to China across a broad range of treatment areas including Specialty Care, Cardiovascular, Diabetes and Vaccines, and driving digital innovations to better serve China’s fast growing healthcare needs. Pius is committed to developing people while fostering a company culture of diversity, respect and integrity, and making Sanofi China a real magnet for talents.

Before leading China business, which represents Sanofi’s second largest market worldwide, Pius was the General Manager and Country Chair of Sanofi Brazil. During his tenure in Brazil, he built with the Brazilian team a high-performance organization with great diversity and gender balance, and implemented the highest ethical and integrity standards. Sanofi Brazil was selected among the top 150 best companies to work and named as a Top Employer, both two times in a row.

Pius has extensive experience in the healthcare industry. He joined Sanofi in 1998 and held a variety of key positions over the years, including marketing, sales management and other strategic global managerial positions. He has successfully launched major treatments and led the global team for the anticoagulant that is part of the World Health Organization list of essential medicines. He was Global Marketing Head Cardiology, General Manager in Switzerland, Vice President of Operations Support & Strategic Initiatives for Emerging Markets, and Vice President for the Turkey and Middle East Zone encompassing direct P&L responsibility for 17 countries.
Pius started his career in the healthcare industry at the Cardiology Department of the University of Basel in a research collaboration with Novartis in Switzerland. He also worked at Servier, France.
Pius has a master degree in pharmacy and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Basel, Switzerland, with a PhD degree in medical research. He is also an alumnus of INSEAD and Singularity University. He speaks fluent German, English, French, and Portuguese. Pius is a Swiss national and is based in Shanghai.