Sayf Ismail Email Address

Senior Manager, Marketing

Asia School of Business is the business school focused at developing transformative and principled leaders who will contribute to a better future and advance the emerging world. We are established in collaboration with MIT Sloan in order to be a global knowledge and learning center infused with regional expertise, insights and perspectives of Asian and emerging market economies.

Setup a start-up software house straight out of college and grew the company from a 3 friend outfit to a boutique IT firm providing consulting services for companies who want to use tech to move their businesses forward. 13 years onwards the company is still going strong although i have left to pursue other passions. In my early role as a Business owner / IT Systems Analyst, I had the opportunity to work on 'engagements' with many organisations. My job was to understand their business and processes in order to advise them on how best to use technology to be more efficient and effective. Each engagement was a short education in the client's business and industry which provided me new challenges and learnings every time. Over the years my interest and skills has leaned towards advising clients on branding, marketing and sales, especially technology driven marketing due to my background in tech. An opportunity to couple my interest in marketing and passion for sports (especially football) presented itself, I joined the Football Association of Malaysia as the head of Marketing & Social Responsibility in 2014. Being on the 'inside' of football was a fascinating period where I got to learn about broadcasting, TV rights and marketing in sports. It was a pleasure working with brands in delivering branding and engagement to the football fans. After almost 3 years in Football, I then moved into the field of producing and organising international conferences with the World Islamic Economic Forum and had the opportunity to be the Head of Marketing & Sponsorship efforts for events across the globe. This gave me exposure to running and marketing global scale of events and access a global network of contacts of whom many are still friends today. I am now with the Asia School of Business, a collaboration between Bank Negara Malaysia and MIT Sloan. I am proud to be part of the team in building a world class business school in my home city of Kuala Lumpur.