This roundtable will explore where stigma still shows up, what is helping to shift it and what workplaces can do to keep the conversation moving forward.
Wendy Boey
Wendy Boey is a mental health advocate based in Singapore. A two-time breast cancer survivor with over 20 years of corporate experience, Wendy is currently focusing on writing during a career transition. Drawing from her lived experiences with physical, mental, and neuro-developmental health, Wendy hopes to reduce the stigma around mental health and encourage greater compassion, self-kindness, and psychological safety in the workplace.
This session will explore how organisations across APAC can support their people through challenging periods, building resilience while creating the mental stability and support employees need to thrive.
Harnesh Kaur
SEA Health & Wellbeing Manager
Harnesh Kaur is a regional Health & Wellbeing leader and strategic business partner with over 16 years of experience across clinical healthcare, public health, NGOs, energy and FMCG. Across Southeast Asia, she partners with senior leaders to translate evidence into practical, culturally relevant strategies that strengthen mental health, psychological safety, inclusion, leadership capability and sustainable performance. Her work connects wellbeing with organisational culture and business strategy. Harnesh holds a Master’s in Public Health and is a qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist. She combines public health expertise and behavioural insight to help organisations strengthen leadership, support people through change and embed wellbeing into workplace culture.
This session will explore how workplaces can rethink their approach, challenge assumptions and find new, nuanced ways to reach and engage men across their workforce.
Uday Burra
Head of People Care - APJ & India
Uday Burra is an Executive Coach, HR Strategist, and strong believer in Normalizing mental health conversations. He has close to three decades of experience contributing to various HR & Leadership roles across various countries & cultures. He is Currently Leading People Care function for Nokia APJ. He is PCC Trained and a Master Coach at Nokia. As Executive Coach his focus is on solution oriented approaches to work & life overall. He practices solution-oriented coaching method. His has many years of experience coaching senior organization leaders, first time entrepreneurs and sales professionals. His experience includes working for Dell, TATA Group & Sapient where he made significant impact in HR service delivery, leadership development & business partner leadership roles.
Cheng Hsiang Cheong
Staff Engineer, Labor Productivity & Data Engineering
Cheng Hsiang believes we perform at our best when we can be our authentic selves at work. In Front End Labor Productivity & Data Engineering, he combines technology and human performance to help people thrive and make work more meaningful. He also serves as APAC regional lead for PRIDE+ Allies Employee Resource Group, and volunteers with We Are Hear, facilitating heart-based listening for the community, where people can practice listening without judgement. Cheng Hsiang champions workplaces where people feel safe to contribute, ask for support and express vulnerability- and where the courage to be themselves is celebrated.
Sarmeet Khurana
Wellbeing Manager
Sarmeet Khurana is a counselling psychologist and workplace wellbeing practitioner with experience across wellbeing, inclusion, belonging, and employee experience in global organization. Her work focuses on creating psychologically safe, human-centered workplaces where people feel connected, supported and able to thrive. She has designed and implemented initiatives that strengthen wellbeing, foster belonging and build cultures of trust across diverse geographies and employee populations. Sarmeet has facilitated numerous virtual and in-person sessions on wellbeing, emotional intelligence, psychological safety and inclusive workplace culture. Drawing on psychological insights, reflective practices, trust-building activities and improvisation-based approaches, she creates engaging experiences that encourage meaningful conversation, self-awareness, connection and learning. She is passionate about humanizing the workplace and helping people build healthier relationships with themselves and others.
This session will explore how organisations can look critically at job design, organisational structures, workplace pressures and power dynamics, and put the right systems and accountability in place to create healthier, more sustainable ways of working.
Dr Feyona Lau
Psychologist & Pressure Architect
Feyona is a psychologist whose work holds two layers at once. The first is structural: how pressure is generated, and how the design of roles, culture and governance determines where it settles. The second is individual: what a person is already carrying, and the adaptations built to keep carrying it. Neither resolves alone. She is also Wellbeing and High Performance Director at Sharp & Carter, with an executive remit spanning wellbeing strategy, high performance architecture, psychosocial safety, culture and talent development.
This session will explore how organisations can move beyond one-size-fits-all global approaches to build mental wellbeing strategies that reflect the cultures, challenges and needs of employees across APAC.
Priyanka Padhi
Global Wellbeing Program and Employee Experience Lead
Priyanka Padhi is a Wellbeing Global Lead specialising in Trust & Safety and mental health strategies, with extensive experience in workplace wellbeing, psychological health, and employee support. With a background in Organisational Psychology and Counselling Psychology, she brings a strong blend of psychological expertise, strategic leadership, and operational experience. She has led global wellbeing initiatives across diverse, multicultural teams, supporting high-risk and complex content moderation environments through trauma-informed interventions, crisis management, resilience-building, and culturally responsive wellbeing programs. Priyanka works closely with business leaders, HR, operations, training, and external stakeholders to design sustainable wellbeing strategies aligned with organisational and client requirements. With her additional training in Cyber Psychology, she is also passionate about the intersection of AI, psychology, and the future of workplace wellbeing, with a focus on ethical and responsible approaches to technology-enabled mental health support.
This session will explore how organisations across APAC can walk the talk, turning good intentions into meaningful action and creating support that employees genuinely feel and benefit from.
Dr. Siti Khadijah Zainal Badri
Associate Professor
Siti Khadijah Zainal Badri is an Associate Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. Her research focuses on mental health and wellbeing in social, work and organisational contexts. Her work spans occupational health, work design, job insecurity, burnout, work family relationships, leadership and organisational wellbeing, alongside protective resources such as resilience, spirituality and personal growth. She also examines wellbeing among younger generations and in changing work environments shaped by digitalisation and AI. Building on this work, her current research focuses on workplace mental health governance, examining how organisations translate responsibility for employee mental health into policies, psychosocial risk management, leadership and accountability. Across her research, she seeks to understand how psychological, organisational and social conditions shape wellbeing at work and beyond, recognising employees as whole people whose working and personal lives are interconnected.
It was honestly such a good conversation that I didn’t want it to end – I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that way about any panel I’ve been on!
