IYD Appoints New Co-chairs for Year 2019
IYD celebrates the new season by transitioning to new co-chairs for year 2019. Wafa Taftazani (Y20 Delegate China 2016) and Melvin Hade (Y20 Delegate Germany 2017) had dutifully accepted their nominations and will replace our outgoing co-chairs Biondi Sima (Y20 Delegate Turkey 2015) and Zeva Sudana (Y20 Delegate Australia 2014).
Both co-chairs had previously served as Board Members. Below are their updated profiles. We would also like to use this opportunity to thank Biondi and Zeva for their service in the past two months, whose vision and programme have expanded IYD’s capacity and brought the organizations into a new height. We are optimistic that this legacy can be carried out even further and beyond under the current leadership.
Wafa Taftazani
Wafa Taftazani currently works at Google as Country Strategic Partnerships Manager for YouTube, and is also a Co-Founder and Commissioner at Modal Rakyat, a financial technology platform. He earned an MBA from the University of Cambridge with a full scholarship from LPDP, and a BA in Political Science with a focus on International Relations from Parahyangan Catholic University.
He began his career as a corporate and investment banker at the The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, and as a Business Development Manager at Shopee. Wafa also served as a consultant for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Grab and CNBC.
Passionate in socio-political causes, he serves as a Vice Chairman at Inovator 4.0 Indonesia, and as a Board Member at Indonesian Youth Diplomacy, before eventually taking on the role of Co-Chair at the organization.
Wafa has received various national and international awards from governments, educational institutions, the media, and global technology companies. In his spare time, Wafa enjoys video games, automobiles, and horror films.
Melvin Hade
Melvin Hade (23) is a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, the leading global management consulting firm that serves many of the world’s most influential businesses, governments and institutions. At McKinsey, his experience include serving leading companies in the banking, telecommunication, logistic and retail sectors across Southeast Asia, where he advises large corporate clients and state-owned enterprises on their most pressing challenges and opportunities.
Prior to McKinsey, Melvin had rich experience in a spectrum of fields ranging from investment banking at Credit Suisse, academic research at Nanyang Technological University and wealth management at UOB Bank. In addition, major private and public institutions across Asia have granted him 3 distinct merit-based scholarships from 2007 to 2017.
He received his Bachelor of Economics from the University of Indonesia, where he graduated with Cum Laude honors in an accelerated duration of 3.5 years and was awarded with the Highest GPA Award at his program. During university, Melvin had won 4 national and international titles in the field of Model United Nations and have represented both his university and country for international conferences and competitions, including the 2015 Harvard National Model United Nations in Boston and the 2014 Open Government Partnership Conference in Bali.
Melvin is also one of the Top 5 Graduates of the Young Leaders for Indonesia (YLI) program in 2016 and recently was awarded by LinkedIn as the LinkedIn Power Profile for two consecutive years, in 2017 and 2018; making him the youngest person to win the award in both 2017 and 2018.
