Hugh is an entrepreneur with 30 years success leading ventures and building innovation communities around startups and corporations. He is currently CEO at JFDI.Asia and Adjunct Associate Professor at National University of Singapore. Since 2012 Hugh has co-founded, mentored or invested in more than 70 startup companies, achieving 48% IRR.
Hugh's Physics degree was sponsored by GEC-Marconi Research, where he worked on digital radar, radio propagation and home automation. This technical background gave him the opportunity to train as a TV producer-director with the BBC's Tomorrow's World, a live primetime science show watched by up to 8 million viewers each week.
Hugh left the BBC to found Narrateo, an independent TV production company. It received a British Academy Award nomination making over 150 documentaries for Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
Building on his experience managing creative people and IP, in 2001, Hugh co-founded Pembridge Partners. This London-based investment and advisory firm raised over USD50m working with 300+ technology media and marketing firms. Hugh captured the insights he gained in his first book Brainfruit, co-authored with Mark Chong, and published by McGraw-Hill.
In 2009 Hugh and his wife chose to raise their son in Singapore, where Hugh co-founded JFDI.Asia. As the first business accelerator in SE Asia, JFDI proved pivotal in kick-starting Singapore's entrepreneurial ecosystem, deploying approximately USD3m into a portfolio of 70 international startups. JFDI has also supported thousands of start-up founders through its outreach programs. The second book that Hugh co-edited, Facing Down Failure, captures eight Singapore startup stories.
Outside work, Hugh co-founded UAS, a UK education charity, with Simon Singh MBE. UAS has enabled hundreds of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) undergraduates to explore a career in teaching and it now forms part of more than 25% of UK STEM undergraduate courses.
Born a UK citizen, Hugh is now a Permanent Resident of Singapore.
