Google Cloud has on Tuesday announced the appointment of Serene Sia as Country Director of its business in Singapore.
Google Cloud said in a statement that Sia will be responsible for leading go-to-market strategy and operations spanning consulting, sales, and partner ecosystem, collaborating with teams across Google to help organizations in Singapore reimagine their business and industry using enterprise-grade cloud artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
It said that she will report to Mark Micallef, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud.
During her time with these multinational companies, Serene led strategic business engagements and partnerships with organizations in financial services, telecommunications, retail, manufacturing, public sector, and more.
In 2014, she helped set up and scale human capital consulting company Presence of IT, which was acquired by Deloitte in 2019.
“Whether it’s in launching the AI Trailblazers initiative to accelerate AI adoption or doubling down on a whole-of-government cloud adoption strategy, Singapore—with its pioneering and pro-innovation approach—is well poised to continue harnessing the latest technologies to create new growth opportunities in the digital economy,” said Mark Micallef, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud.
“Serene joins Google Cloud at an exciting phase of our growth in Singapore, where numerous organizations are emerging from our Generative AI Innovation Sandboxes with solution prototypes that they are aiming to scale with enterprise-grade safety, security, and privacy,
Google Cloud Country Director (Singapore) Serene Sia said that Google Cloud has been driving meaningful initiatives in partnership with the government—many of which are the first-of-its-kind in Singapore—to democratize the benefits of AI for all.
“I’m excited to be joining the company at a moment where we are not only spearheading conversations about the possibilities of AI but actively helping organizations to apply the technology in practical ways,
“I look forward to building on the success of these initiatives, deepening relationships with our customers, and enabling them to take full advantage of AI while maintaining protection over their intellectual property, adhering to regulations around data security and privacy, and ensuring that their models and applications are safe to use,” she added.
It is noted that on November 14, Google Cloud became the first MNC hyperscaler to launch data residency for its generative AI (gen AI) capabilities, giving organizations in Singapore the ability to store data from their use of Vertex AI Model Garden and Generative AI Studio within Singapore.
It also enables companies in highly regulated industries, including participants of the AI Trailblazers initiative, to scale the gen AI solution prototypes that they have built to serve more customers and employees.
In addition, this follows Google Cloud’s most recent collaboration with the Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT). CSIT, an agency in Singapore’s Ministry of Defence, is now piloting Google Distributed Cloud Hosted, a fully air-gapped sovereign cloud solution, to support its efforts to harness AI in tackling Singapore’s defense and security challenges.
According to the statement, Sia is a firm believer in doing good, paying it forward, and serving with purpose.
She has served as an SGTech Councillor since 2018, a committee member of the Women in Tech Chapter of the Singapore Computer Society since 2021, and a board member of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation Centre for Corporate Learning (SMF CCL) since 2022.
She is also an executive committee member of and plays an active part in FireFly Mission, a nonprofit humanitarian organization run entirely by volunteers.
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