Our leaders
Board of Directors
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Jonah Levey - Chairman
Jonah Levey is the Founder and Chairman of Navigos Group, Ltd., the company which owns Navigos Search and VietnamWorks. Navigos Group is the largest and leading provider of Recruitment services in Vietnam, has more than 200 employees, serves millions of jobseekers and over 8,000 corporate customers annually.
Jonah is also a non-executive Director of Mekong Capital, a leading Vietnam-focused private equity firm.
Prior to relocating to Vietnam in 2002, Jonah was a Managing Director with the New York-based executive search firm Raines International, Inc. Jonah was also formerly with Picard International, Ltd., where he was an Executive Search Consultant in the firm's Strategy and Finance practice.
Jonah's favorite quote is “Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are right.” When he's not working he enjoys playing with his kids and photography.
Jonah holds a Bachelor degree in Economics from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
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Chris Freund - Non Executive Director
Chris Freund is the founder, largest shareholder and a member of the Board of Directors of Mekong Capital. Prior to forming Mekong Capital in 2001, Chris was a Vice President and Portfolio Manager with Templeton Asset Management, Ltd., the emerging markets arm of the Franklin/Templeton Group.
Chris’ involvement with Vietnam dates from mid-1994 when he was doing a research project for Harris Associates, a Chicago based fund management firm. Chris worked for Templeton in Vietnam from early 1995 until mid-1998. In mid-1998, Chris relocated to Templeton’s Singapore office, where he covered the technology sector in emerging markets. Chris moved back to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in April 2001 to establish Mekong Capital.
Chris is a member of the Board of Directors of Mekong Enterprise Fund II, Ltd., and Chairman of Vietnam Azalea Fund Limited. Chris is a Special Advisor to the Vietnam Association of Financial Investors (VAFI). Chris is one of the co-founders, and a non-executive Director, of Management Consulting Group Ltd., which owns VietnamWorks.com , Vietnam's most successful job recruitment website, and Navigos Group , the largest executive search company in Vietnam. Chris is also a co-founder, and non-executive Chairman, of Mekong Ventures, a privately held company which invests in seed-stage and start-up companies in Vietnam.
Chris holds a Bachelor degree in Psychology, with honors, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Chris grew up in Chicago and attended the Latin School of Chicago.
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Mark Gillin - Non Executive Director
Mark Gillin is the Managing Partner of Indochina Development Partners. He is also founder and Chairman of America Indochina Management Ltd. (AIM) a diversified Holding Company with operations throughout Vietnam and Cambodia. Since its founding in 1996, AIM has emerged as one of the leading Sales and Distribution companies in Indochina, with market leadership in many of its product categories, covering a diverse range of industries including Construction Materials, Consumer Products and Industrial Consumables. Mr. Gillin has successfully managed in a variety of markets (Japan, Hong Kong, Guam, Vietnam, Cambodia) at various stages of development. Prior to coming to Vietnam in 1993, Mr. Gillin spent five years with Getz Bros. & Co. Inc., the oldest and largest US based non-commodities Trading company, where he worked closely on marketing and distribution related issues with leading multinationals including Nestle, Mobile Chemical, Kimberly Clark, Abbot Labs, Colgate Palmolive, Heineken and others. Mr. Gillin graduated with honors from Duke University with a B.A. in Public Policy Studies.
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Chris Harvey - Chief Executive Officer
Chris Harvey has over 10 years of experience with consumer Internet businesses in the USA and Vietnam. A self-professed “Internet junkie,” Chris has worked at prominent Internet brands such as Yahoo! and AOL prior to joining Navigos Search and VietnamWorks.
Since joining the company in 2006, Chris has focused on creating a legendary organization of committed, talented and passionate people dedicated to helping individuals and companies achieve their dreams. He believes that taking care of our Dream Makers ensures that they take care of our customers. His vision is for Navigos Search and VietnamWorks to be the most challenging, most rewarding, most innovative and most fun company in all of Vietnam.
Chris’s favorite quote is “There is no growth in the comfort zone, there is no comfort in the growth zone.” His favorite book is “Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success” by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg. His business heroes are Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and Jack Welch of General Electric. He spends much of his free time dancing Swing and Salsa.
Chris holds a Bachelor degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA degree from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
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Daniel Morton - Non-Executive Director
Daniel brings with him world-class experience, and significantly elevates the capability of Navigos Group management team. Previously, he was the CFO of a Pan European investment bank, Broadview and Bryan Garnier based in Paris, London and Geneva. He has been working in Corporate Finance for 6 years with technology based growth companies. He also founded a community website for international young mobile professionals. Daniel holds an MA in Economic History from the London School of Economics, a Certificate in Political Science from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, and a BA Degree in International Affairs from the University of Michigan.
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Bryan Pelz - Non-Executive Director
With 21 years in software and 8 years in startups, Bryan is a veteran entrepreneur working in Vietnam. Prior to relocating to Vietnam in 2002, Bryan was co-founder and CEO of Fetch Technologies, an R&D company specializing in artificial intelligence, information extraction, data integration, portal and search technologies in Manhattan Beach, California. Prior to that, he was co-founder and CTO of Nomade.fr, one of the leading Internet portals in France. The company completed a strategic merger with LibertySurf which went public and was later acquired by the Tiscali Group.
Bryan holds a B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also attended La Sorbonne (the University of Paris) and took courses in French language and culture.
Company Executives
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Chris Harvey - Chief Executive Officer
Chris Harvey has over 10 years of experience with consumer Internet businesses in the USA and Vietnam. A self-professed “Internet junkie,” Chris has worked at prominent Internet brands such as Yahoo! and AOL prior to joining Navigos Search and VietnamWorks.
Since joining the company in 2006, Chris has focused on creating a legendary organization of committed, talented and passionate people dedicated to helping individuals and companies achieve their dreams. He believes that taking care of our Dream Makers ensures that they take care of our customers. His vision is for Navigos Search and VietnamWorks to be the most challenging, most rewarding, most innovative and most fun company in all of Vietnam.
Chris’s favorite quote is “There is no growth in the comfort zone, there is no comfort in the growth zone.” His favorite book is “Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success” by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg. His business heroes are Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and Jack Welch of General Electric. He spends much of his free time dancing Swing and Salsa.
Chris holds a Bachelor degree in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA degree from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
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Carlton Pringle - Chief Technical Officer
Carlton Pringle has 15 years experience leading technical teams in the UK and Vietnam. Carlton wrote his first computer program 28 years ago – and since then hasn’t stopped creating software. In 2001, after a long stint at Sage Software in the UK, Carlton moved to Vietnam where he worked as CTO at SilkRoad one of Vietnam’s largest Software Outsourcing Operations. At SilkRoad Carlton loved building strong software teams and together those teams completed over 50 successful projects. Carlton was particularly delighted when in 2006 Harvey Nash purchased SilkRoad in order to get their hands on his team.
Since joining Navigos Carlton has focused on finding great ways to make technology work well for the group by building great Product, Platform, Processes and People. Carlton is passionate about using tech to drive business productivity and efficiency. His vision is for his team to be able to respond to colleague and customer technology needs faster than they can have good ideas. He believes good technology leadership is all about setting up the right team environment and approaches where people can focus and perform.
Carlton’s favorite quote is, “These [best] software developers are easily a factor of one thousand more productive than the those [worst] software developers. You don’t see variations like that in many other professions.” His favorite books are leadership and technology books. He admires Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and John Williams (composer) although his favorite leader is still Winston Churchill. Carlton spends his free time watching movies, listening to rock music and playing piano (the latter with more enthusiasm than ability).
Carlton has a Bachelor of Science honors degree from the University of Manchester, UK (UMIST).
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Chu Thi Ngoc Hanh - Finance Manager
Ngoc Hanh has joined Accounting & Finance Department of Navigos Group since July 2008 after 6 years at Ernst & Young where she maintained a significant profile of manufacturing and property customers.
At Navigos Group, Hanh plays the role as Finance Manager. She is in charged of financial reports, analysis reports, corporate finance, budgets, tax, audit and improvements of accounting software.
Empowering her staffs but asking them for the result commitments reflects Hanh’s Leadership philosophy. Despite of working long hours with numbers and charts, she makes her job less stressful and more interesting by joining the company’s activities like Halloween, Thanks Giving, Christmas, Mid Autumn Festival, Year End party with her team. She loves the friendly and dynamic environment at Navigos Group and also enjoys working with her young and passionate accounting team. All these encouraging factors have brought her through many hard times and helped her achieve career goals.
She likes the book “The Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon where she finds the answer for the questions of success roots which are seeded from the positive energy charged by ourselves in every working day.
Hanh graduated from University of Economics major in Accounting and Auditing and from Ho Chi Minh City University of Law. She also earned FCCA and Vietnamese CPA. Currently, she has been teaching ACCA where she is complimented with great enthusiasm and high quality services.
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Nguyen Thi Van Anh - Managing Director, Navigos Search
Van Anh joined Navigos Group as a result of the strategic acquisition of Ernst & Young HR Advisory Services unit. Since 2004, she has been leading a team servicing clients in the North of Vietnam in Executive Search and other HR Advisory Services.
Before joining E&Y, Van Anh was the HR Manager of Hatay Brewery with her focus on developing and implementing programs & policies to ensure effective utilization of human capital in supporting the company's objectives, growing the company from start-up to 300-person strong.
Van Anh is extremely well versed in strategic HR Management practices having received training from international renowned consulting groups such as Hay Management Consulting Group. She has over 10 years of progressive experience in HR Management and Consulting.
Van Anh has a Post Graduate Certificate on Human Resource Management from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, and has her Master Degree program in HR Management from the Akamai University, Hawaii (US), Bachelor Degrees in Foreign Languages from the Hanoi National University.
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Nguyen Thu Phuong Tiffany - Operations & HR Director
Prior to joining Navigos Group, Tiffany has worked at top software companies such as Microsoft and Rational Software who has been then acquired by IBM.
Since joining the company in September 2003, Tiffany has been taking many roles in the company such as IT, Marketing, Strategic Initiatives, Operations, and HR. With a strong passion in people development, she commits to provide inspiring and effective leadership, open lines of communication, excellent learning and development opportunities, a safe and fun workplace, competitive reward and benefits to help our Dream Makers grow and succeed in their career.
She went extra mile building WOW! Service culture to go beyond what customers and Dream Makers expected. After the success of implementing WOW! Service in Operations team, she has re-named the HR team to Dream Makers Care team with the mission of delivering WOW! Services to both Dream Makers and their customers every time everywhere. To her, WOW means doing something a little unconventional and innovative – Differentiate to be the best.
Tiffany graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Mathematics. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Sciences from Washington State University.
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Tang Tri Trong - National Sales Director, VietnamWorks
Tang Tri Trong joined VietnamWorks with 15 years management experience and numerous outstanding achievements. His recent position was Assistant Director of Agency Training and Development in charge of Nationwide Training for Prudential's agency force. During his time directly managing sales force, Trong’s team won “Prudential Top Team” Award for the year 2006 running from among 19 teams across Vietnam. Previously, Trong had worked at several international companies in different sales management positions such as Sales Manager, Assistant Director of Agency and Deputy Director.
Joining VietnamWorks family in the middle of 2008, Trong has brought many valuable innovations to the company, including a revised incentive scheme, exciting the sales team each day with music and dancing, building a culture of success and developing a new recognition system.
Trong loves films and often reads books in his free time. His favorite book is “Leadership Gold” of John C. Maxwell. His philosophy of life and leadership is summarized by Zig Ziglar’s quote: “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want”.
Trong has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Ho Chi Minh City. In addition, he has attended many local and overseas training and has deep knowledge in sales, management and leadership.
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Ha Hue Chi - Director of Marketing and Operations, VietnamWorks
Hue Chi joined VietnamWorks in September 2005 to set up Customer Care department. Three years later, Hue Chi moved to Marketing department as Marketing Manager with the mission “whenever a person in Vietnam thinks of finding their dream jobs, they think of VietnamWorks.” And starting September 2010, she oversees Marketing, Customer Care and Product Management for VietnamWorks.
Hue Chi believes that “everything falls and rises on leadership”, she focuses on adding values to her people by challenging, coaching and developing them. To her, the moment you see your people grow and fly high on their own wings; you know that you are successful as a leader.
With an interest in internet businesses and marketing; Hue Chi always seeks for new ideas and learns from best practices to become best practices. Her philosophy for product management is “simple is the best” and for marketing, she is passionate about showing the ways to help jobseekers find their dream jobs and customer find right people for their teams.
Her favorite books are “Winning” by Jack Welch and “From Good To Great” by Jim Collins, and her favorite quote is “It does not matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going!” by Brian Tracy.
Hue Chi has a Bachelor degree in English from Da Nang University.