U.S. - ASEAN Internship Program Webinar: Digital Entrepreneurship, Resiliency in the Midst of COVID-19 Crisis

The US-ASEAN Business Council, alongside the US Mission to ASEAN, held its webinar series titled "Digital Entrepreneurship, Resiliency in the Midst of COVID-19 Crisis" on Wednesday, 14 April 2021. Moderated by Juan Cammarano, Economic Officer at the U.S. Mission to ASEAN, the Webinar featured Adna Rahman (Head of Entrepreneurship Innovation Centre, Brunei Darussalam Ministry of Education), Rajiv Menon (Senior Director at Cisco Investments), Dr. Ivy Chung (Director at University of Malaya Center of Innovation and Commercialization), and Afiq Mohammed (Lead Business Counsellor at Shell Liveware, Brunei Shell Petroleum, and YSEALI Alumni) as guest speakers.

The webinar served as a platform for all speakers to share their insights from innovation and entrepreneurship, required innovation and business skills, to challenges in becoming successful digital entrepreneurs. Prof. Ivy talked about entrepreneurship in Malaysia’s case and several initiatives taken to enhance it. Mr. Rajiv gave some insights regarding the Cisco initiative for young entrepreneurs. Mr. Adna shared about Brunei’s Ministry of Education initiatives to cultivate young talents with entrepreneurship programs and stressed the importance of a multidisciplinary approach. Mr. Afiq also shared around Brunei Shell Petroleum, under Liveware, a few of its initiatives to enhancing entrepreneurship among youth with competition (Hackathon), grants, and many more.

The current situation of this pandemic shows the importance of economic recovery efforts from the government side and the private sector, which are working with academics to facilitate capacity building for youth, which is the goal of this webinar, especially with many opportunities for digital entrepreneurship since there’s a boom in automation, technological developments, e-commerce, to digital marketing.