Our People
Marie Kretz Di Meglio, Founder & CEO
Marie has extensive experience in education, including 5 years running an online learning centre. Prior to founding Uplifters, she worked at Aidha in Singapore, an NGO providing financial education to domestic workers. Uplifters is based on her knowledge of domestic workers’ issues and the best techniques to teach online. She created Uplifters because she found it unfair that despite their sacrifices, most domestic workers go back home in the same situation or worse off than when they arrived abroad. She believes this is a solvable issue thanks to online tools combined with the power of community support.
Haley Herbst, Head of Marketing and Development
Haley comes to Uplifters with nearly a decade of nonprofit experience in the States. Having spent the majority of her career in Washington, D.C. Haley has significant experience expanding organisations fundraising and marketing efforts. Haley moved to Hong Kong in 2020 where she spent time working for a corporate entity and is excited to be back in the nonprofit world to help make impactful changes in under-represented communities.
Asnah Subian, Programmes Manager
Asnah is experienced working in the nonprofit and IGO sectors in Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. She is familiar with the issues that are faced by migrant workers in Hong Kong through her experience at Fair Employment Agency where she was part of a team involved in providing ethical employment for migrant workers coming to Hong Kong. Asnah joined Uplifters as she believes education is a crucial tool in being able to empower marginalised communities. She believes that given the right tools and an amazing community, migration can be made very successful!
Janet Yip, Finance and Administration Manager
Janet is a qualified accountant and has over 10 years of experience in the FMCG and professional services industries in Australia and Hong Kong. She is passionate about supporting underprivileged minority groups by participating in community volunteer programs. She joined Uplifters because it helps disadvantaged women to achieve their full potential through personal development.
Dedy Kristanto, Programmes Assistant
Dedy has experience working in NGOs and the profit sector. While in Indonesia, he was heavily involved in handling refugees and internally displaced persons as a result of conflict and natural disasters. Dedy believes that education is one of the keys to encouraging migrant domestic workers to have the ability to deal with various problems they often encounter, such as financial, legal problems, subordination as women and so on. He joined Uplifters because it offers online-based education for migrant domestic workers.
Board of Directors
Romain Di Meglio
Romain is the regional CEO of APRIL for Asia-Pacific. With over 3,800 staff in 28 countries, APRIL is the largest wholesale insurance broker in the world. Romain has more than 10 years experience in mergers and acquisitions, finance and negotiations.
He got involved with Uplifters as it was the only way to have a conversation with Marie (Uplifters Founder and Romain’s wife) over dinner. Coming from a family where education and equity are critical, the project quickly grew on him. He is now supporting Uplifters on strategy and finance.
Alex Misseri
Alex has been devoted to building digital businesses and experiences for the past 13 years. First in Shanghai, where he founded an eCommerce startup, grew the online revenues of a female fashion group and built the omnichannel commerce practice of a global digital agency. He then moved to Hong Kong to head up the digital transformation of Bluebell, a distributor of premium and luxury brands in Asia. In this role, Alex designed the digital strategy of the group and supported its local business units in the development of the skills and ecosystem required to increase the online presence and sales of their brands.
Alex was looking for an opportunity to put his experience at the service of a cause and an organisation he cared about. Being a father of three, Alex is moved by the stories of all the domestic workers, including his, whose children are raised by their parents back at home. So when he met Marie (Uplifters’ Founder), they instantly saw the opportunity to put his digital skills at the service of Uplifters’ growth.
Sujata Ramakrishna
Having personally benefited from access to both education and career opportunities, Sujata believes ‘access’ to be a powerful game-changer in someone’s life. She was drawn to Uplifters given its ability to provide access to education and life skills through fit for purpose, scalable programs that enable disadvantaged women the opportunity to impact their lives positively.
Sujata has held senior positions in Marketing, General Management and Inclusive Business for over 10 years and has successfully led teams through integration, the financial crisis and through organizational change. Sujata sat on the APAC Leadership Team for both the Chemicals – Polyurethanes and Consumer HealthCare businesses at a Fortune 500 company.
Back from a long break from work, she is now taking on new challenges within the Digital Technology and Innovation team for a Fortune 500 biotech company working on transformation. Prior work within the team included co-leading the development of Robotic Process Automation CoE as a pilot, whose blueprint was partly used to establish Automation as a global capability.
She is passionate about working in and supporting purpose-driven businesses in both the profit and not for profit sectors and in providing thought leadership in the area of Diversity & Inclusion.
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