Steven Poh is the founder, executive director and CEO of i2Media. Formerly the General Manager/Senior Consultant of the Consulting Division of a public-listed software development house, he has more than 18 years of combined media experience in business journalism, marketing communications and public relations. He has also worked as a Coopers & Lybrand trainee accountant and a corporate communications manager.
As a writer, Steven excelled in his field. He was the Kuala Lumpur-based business correspondent for the now defunct Asiaweek magazine (an AOL Time Warner Company) covering regional business. He began his career in journalism as a staff writer/sub-editor of Malaysian Business, a fortnightly business magazine published by Berita Publishing Sdn Bhd (formerly a subsidiary of The New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd) in 1990.
During his tenure with Malaysian Business, he was part of the team that witnessed the magazine's circulation soaring from 9,000 copies a month to 28,000 copies a month. He was awarded the Malaysian Press Institute prize for best magazine writing in 1992 for his cover story on Royal Selangor International. He has also led the business desk of theSun during its formative years.
For his journalistic excellence, Steven was awarded the prestigious Wolfson Press Fellowship to Cambridge University in 1996. He has traveled extensively during the course of his work. (Read about one of his trips to the Sinai Desert in Highway Malaysia, April 1993 edition.) He has also presented papers to various public forums, for instance, on issues like the impact of Internet on journalism to the Asian Institute of Development Communication (AIDCOM) and Web communities in University of Malaya.
As senior consultant in his previous workplace, Steven was involved in looking into the best models and processes, in particular Web-based applications to facilitate efficient business operations. And because he believes that the future of human communication will pretty much revolve around the Internet, he is currently looking into effective ways of forging a Web-based lifestyle for companies as well as the men-on-the-street.
Steven has a Master of Science degree in Speech Communication specializing in organizational communication from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from Southeast Missouri State University. In his current capacity as principal consultant, Steven spends a great deal of his time researching the impact of effective branding and positioning strategies on successful companies and the impact of the Internet (Read his exclusive zoomFinance interview with Henry Tan, the former managing director of Mindshare on the subject), in particular, electronic communities, on Malaysian businesses. He also does value-added strategy consulting for clients in the area of media and marketing communications as well as Web-based business strategies.
He continues to write whenever he's not cooking or in front of the television following English Premier League football and cheering for Manchester United. To keep fit, Steven regularly plays squash and tennis and enjoys white water rafting. He has also climbed Southeast Asia's tallest mountain – Mount Kinabalu – twice, but has not managed to reach the peak for various reasons. But Steven is determined to make at least one more attempt for that mountain top experience.
