Steve also has broad experience in government, holding senior roles through which he created and implemented national programs for an innovation-based economy.
Steve currently serves as CEO of Singularity University (SU), a Silicon Valley based global organisation that enables leaders to understand how future technologies will impact their companies and countries, and engages those leaders to help them shape that future. SU seeks to positively impact one billion people through the collective capabilities of the entrepreneurs, investors, corporations and governments with which it works.
Before joining SU, Steve created SGInnovate, a private company wholly-owned by the Singapore Government, to help entrepreneurial scientists create investable deeptech startups. Recognising that Singapore has a top-ranked education system and a pool of world class scientific research talent, Steve envisioned forging a specialised mini-ecosystem of scientists, investors, corporations, venture builders, and government leaders around the shared goal of generating new economic value. During Leonard’s tenure as its Founding CEO, SGInnovate built an engaged community of 35,000 people, held 600 discussion events around science and technology, and launched more than 90 deep tech startups into which it invested $50M.
Prior to founding SGInnovate, Steve served as the Executive Deputy Chairman of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), a Singapore Government statutory board overseen by the Ministry of Communications and Information. And prior to that he was a senior executive in Europe and Asia for several global technology companies. Steve serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the main board of Singapore Post Ltd (SingPost), an international e-commerce and logistics operator, and as an INED for AsiaSat, a HK-based satellite operator. He is an alumnus of a two-year MIT Sloan School of Management program aimed at nation-scale entrepreneurial and innovation-led ecosystems.