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About Us : Our Team
 
 

Ken Chang
Founder & Managing Partner

Mr. Chang is the architect of Minfon's vision and is responsible for contract negotiation, team building and strategy execution in the U.S. and Greater China. He is experienced in representing US and Chinese companies for general management, business development, and corporate strategy. Under Minfon, Mr. Chang has served as CEO and COO for various startups and clients. Most recently, he was the COO for the Internet/Marketing division of F&T Group, a medium-sized real estate developer based in New York and Shanghai. He has also initiated and led spin-offs and projects from the ground up to capture market opportunities internationally, and was the Founder and CEO of Minfonsupplier, Inc., with the responsibilities of business plan writing, fundraising from Angel investors and VCs, team building, and operation management.

In the beginning of his career, Mr. Chang served as a Global Account Manager for Telia Internet, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of a Swedish, tier-one service provider, Telia AB Group. He was the first person hired in the West Coast division with a proven record of closing and managing multi-million dollar accounts. Telia AB Group was later sold for US$5.1 billion. Before joining Telia, Mr. Chang worked for Dealix Corporation, an internet company based in Palo Alto, California. In Dealix, he was one of the early employees to aggressively develop new business and strategic partnerships. Dealix Corp. was later acquired by The Cobalt Group.

Mr. Chang has been featured on newspapers such as Sing Tao Daily and The World Journal. He is also the Founder of "One Mentor & Four Mentees" a unique, non-conventional mentoring program implemented in SVASE (currently called "Learn from a Legend"), Silicon Valley, California, and the Founding Chair of the corporate sponsorship committee at the Asia-Silicon Valley Connection. Ken received a B.S. in Finance from State University of New York at Binghamton. Ken is fluent in both English and Mandarin.

 

Alistair Davidson
Consultant - Corporate Strategy

Alistair Davidson has spent over twenty five years in international business. Born in the UK, educated in Europe, Canada and the US, he speaks English, French and some German. He has been CEO of five companies and has worked in a wide variety of industries including financial services, publishing and media, consulting, venture capital, incubation, high tech, manufacturing, healthcare and consumer packaged goods consulting.

In his career, he has been responsible for launching over a dozen products internationally, has pioneered over $176M of business for smaller firms and has closed over 350 clients including well known names such as AT&T, Baxter International, Cable & Wireless, Dansk Teknologisk Institut, Government of Canada, Government of Korea, Harlequin, Nortel Networks, and Veritas Software. He has advised several dozen Asian companies on their US launch strategies in addition to several dozen US, Canadian, Mexican and European startups.

Mr. Davidson is also an accomplished author, with three books on strategy and technology. He has also taught strategy, marketing, new product launch and best practices in business models to MBAs and executives in Canada, the US and Europe.

Mr. Davidson holds an B.A. from Harvard College and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.

 

Alan Du
Consultant - Venture Technology

Alan Du is an experienced technologist and investor. Formerly with Citibank in New York and Singapore as an Assistant Vice President, Alan managed reengineering Citibank's regional banking system and data communication network, and participated in consolidating Citibank's numerous datacenters in APAC into a super-scale datacenter based in Singapore.

Mr. Du is also a hands-on entrepreneur and has started a few successful ventures. Most recently, He is a co-founder of Zephyr Asia Investment LLC, an investment company specializes in Greater China and the US. Mr. Du was responsible for fundraising, portfolio company evaluation, and contract negotiation.

Mr. Du holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in China and a M.B.A. from Stanford University.

 

Bonnie E. Engel
Consultant - Corporate Communications

Having lived in Hong Kong for 10 years, working as the corporate communications manager for the telecommunications and computer industries, Ms. Engel brings to Minfon her practical experience and knowledge of working in Greater China, contacts in several industries and governments, and a deep understanding of overseas media.

Most recently, she was Vice President of the Yellow Pages Superhighway, Inc., an Internet Website hosting and marketing company for small and medium-sized businesses. At the same time, she was Vice President of the Telecommunications Commission of San Francisco, helping to develop the Master Telecommunications Plan for the city and county. She was among the five founding members of the commission appointed by the Mayor of San Francisco.

Ms. Engel went overseas for ten years in 1986, living and working in Hong Kong. She was Corporate Communications Manager for Hong Kong Telecom and worked at Digital Equipment Corporation (AP) as the Asia-Pacific Corporate and Marketing Communications Manager, overseeing marketing communications and public relations staff in 12 countries for three years, before returning to San Francisco in 1996. She was vice-chair of the American Chamber of Commerce (HK) Technology Committee for four years.

Ms Engel is a graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, IN: B.A., Comparative Literature; M.A., East Asian Languages and Literature; PhD, Comparative Literature.

 

Mentor Networks

Our founder, Ken Chang, is the founder of "One Mentor & Four Mentees" Program at Silicon Valley Association of Entrepreneurs (www.svase.org), in which he hosted monthly dinner with successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople. Though the following mentors do not advise Minfon directly, their success and wisdom certainly inspire and guide the direction of Minfon:

Jonathan Lee, Founder of Corio (NASDAQ: CRIO)
Mihir Parikh, Founder of Asyst Technology (NASDAQ: ASYT)
Kumar Malavalli, Founder of Brocade Communications Systems (NASDAQ: BRCD)
Erika Williams, Former Executive of Amdahl Corporation
Robin Abrams, Former President of Palm Computing (NASDAQ: PALM) and Apple Computer of America (NASDAQ: AAPL)
TJ Rodgers, Founder, President, and CEO of Cypress Corporations.(NASDAQ: CY)
Richard Elkus, Director, KLA-Tencor, (NASDAQ: KLAC)