Building a Board that Drives Impact

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Building a Board that Drives Impact

Your board should be more than a formality – it should be an independent and strategic governing body. Startups, in particular, have to understand how their board members can collectively serve as a force multiplier. Join us as we explore how to build a board that challenges and drives you, supports your vision, and helps create lasting impact. Whether you're building your first board or evolving an existing one, this conversation will offer tactical insights you can put into action.

Brought to you by SID and ACE.SG, this event features a “speed-dating” session to match startup founders with board directors. Please indicate your interest here.

Outcomes:

Learn what makes an effective board at different stages.
Explore strategies on how to choose the right board members.
Understand the nuances of navigating founder-board dynamics.
Discover how to turn your board into a strategic asset.

Programme

2.30pm: Registration and refreshments
3.00pm: Welcome by SID and ACE.SG
3.10pm: Panel discussion
3.50pm: Q&A
4.00pm: Networking and “speed-dating”
5.00pm: End

CPD Hours : 1

SID members: Complimentary (Registration is required)
Non-members: NA.

No-show fee of $50 for members who register and fail to attend without informing us 2 working days prior to the event.

SPEAKERS

Lester Ho
Associate Director, Helmsman LLC

Mr Lester Ho is an associate director with Helmsman LLC. His practice focuses on corporate and commercial law. He advises on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity and venture capital transactions. With extensive experience advising both the buy and sell sides in a wide range of sectors, including digital assets, technology and healthcare, he is a trusted adviser to many emerging companies in starting, growing and scaling their businesses.

Desmond Low
Assistant Director, ACE.SG

Mr Desmond Low heads the efforts of Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE.SG) to establish strategic partnerships and build programmes to support startups in the various stages of their journey. He has collaborated with various companies on activities such as innovation challenges and accelerator programmes to help connect relevant startups to the various problem statement owners. Prior to his current role, he was an academic staff at Singapore Institute of Technology and a researcher in BASF. He has four patents in the area of antimicrobial coatings, polymeric science and water technology.

Kevin Quah
CEO and Co-Founder of Tictag

Mr Kevin Quah is CEO and co-founder of Tictag, a Singapore-based artificial intelligence (AI) company helping companies use data to solve long-tail business problems with data-centric AI. Tictag’s proprietary mobile platform allows companies to harness crowdsourcing or internal knowledge to transform raw data into valuable fuel for AI. Committed to social impact, Tictag also partners with social service organisations to support persons with disabilities, creating opportunities to participate in the booming AI economy.

Unmish Parthasarathi
Founder, Picture Board Partners

Mr Unmish Parthasarathi is an accredited board director and founding chairman of the New Directors Network of the Singapore Institute of Directors. After a decade at IMG Media and BBC Technology in London, New York and Johannesburg, he moved to Singapore in 2008 and worked across Asia for ESPN STAR Sports, News Corp and the International Cricket Council. In 2019, he founded Picture Board Partners – a strategy and communications practice for sports, media and technology. He chairs the governing board of The GoSports Foundation, India’s largest sports nonprofit that sent 32 athletes to the Paris Olympics in 2024. He was educated at Cambridge, London Business School and INSEAD.