Azleena was a Deputy Director at Central Bank of Malaysia since 2005 until April this year. During her nearly 12 years of service, she was instrumental in several key national and international initiatives including positioning Malaysia as an International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) and devising Islamic finance initiatives in the Financial Sector Master Plan 2010-2020. She was also responsible for the Islamic Financial Services Act 2013, development of Islamic finance-related provisions in the Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009, liberalization of the Malaysian legal profession, operationalization of International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation including its Sukuk issuance programme and implementation of GST for the financial sector under Central Bank of Malaysia. She was instrumental in the establishment of Islamic Finance Tax Neutrality Committee and Islamic Finance Law Harmonization Committee. Prior to that, she was with the RHB Group for nearly a decade where her last position was Assistant General Manager, Group Legal and Compliance. Apart from her responsibilities in legal and compliance matters of the Group, she was involved in the operations of the group as an Exco and Credit Committee member of several capital markets related subsidiaries and was joint Group Company Secretary. During her tenure, she was instrumental in most of the merger and acquisition exercises involving the RHB Group beginning with the acquisition of Kwong Yik Bank Berhad and restructuring of the Group to create RHB Bank Berhad and ending with the creation of RHB Islamic Bank Berhad. Trained and qualified as a lawyer, she read law at Manchester Law School, United Kingdom and after graduation, obtained Certificate of Legal Practice (Hons) from the Malaysian Legal Profession Qualifying Board, both on federal scholarship. She is also a graduate of the prestigious TRIUM Global Executive MBA from London School of Economics and Political Science, New York University Stern Business School and HEC Business School Paris, ranked 1st Executive MBA in the world by Financial Times in 2014 which enabled her to gain valuable insights on technology disruption, digital economy, entrepreneurship, globalization, sustainability and digital media marketing. Azleena has advised governments on their Islamic banking, Sukuk, Takaful, taxation, legal and regulatory framework as well as strategies and is a regular speaker on Islamic finance developments, new growth areas, strategies, innovation and developmental laws and regulations. She is now a consultant with SHAPE®.
Mark Smalley is a highly reputable technologist in the Southeast Asia region. He was the first qualified ASEAN MongoDB Master, where he won an award for his open-source NoSQL Content Management System. Since then, he has spent the past 5 years utterly obsessed with blockchain technology, and how distributed computing systems have the potential to change society for the better. He is currently the founder & CEO of Neuroware.io, where they are developing a range of blockchain solutions aimed to improve efficiency, reduce costs and introduce new business opportunities to organizations throughout the region.
