Deborah Kan Keynote Speaker

Deborah Kan is the founder and Executive Editor of Being Patient,  an editorially independent news site building single-subject platforms around specific health topics.  They approach a topic regarding the patient’s point-of-view first and foremost, providing the tools to map complex topics and going straight to the expert community to find answers. She founded the site after growing frustrated with a lack of educational resources following her mother being diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease.

Being Patient provides an invaluable community for sufferers and their relatives. An Alzheimer’s diagnosis, or a similarly significant illness, brings genetic implications for those relatives. Being Patient looks at how genetic predispositions to some diseases might be reversed through lifestyle factors.

She also believes that mental health is vitally important for today’s businesses. With regard to the former, the world’s senior population (over 65s) will increase from just under one billion today to over two billion by 2050. This can bring great opportunities and a booming ‘Silver Dollar’. Alternatively, any consumption boost will be offset by rising healthcare costs. Therefore, increasing our knowledge around brain health will both aid the mental health of working generations and protect them in their future years.

Prior to founding Being Patient, Deborah Kan was an executive producer at The Wall Street Journal in Asia, leading the daily production of video news segments with Journal editors and reporters, as well as video interviews with business leaders and decision-makers.

Before this, Deborah was a news anchor with Reuters Insider, Thomson Reuters’ proprietary news channel, where she reported extensively on the 2008 global economic crisis, China’s 2009 massive economic stimulus package and regulation reform in the aftermath of the economic crisis.

Throughout her career, Deborah Kan has conducted exclusive interviews many world leaders and CEOs, including Uber founder Travis Kalanick, Airbnb’s co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk and Twitter’s former CEO Dick Costolo. She was also one of few international journalists to have interviewed Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, and was the only television journalist from Asia to accompany the New York Philharmonic on their historic 2008 performance in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Deborah is a member of the 2008 class of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, and attended the 2010 YGL program at Harvard University.