Google Cloud has today announced the appointment of Serene Sia as Country Director of its business in Singapore. In her new role, Sia will lead the company's go-to-market strategy and operations, which cover areas such as consulting, sales, and the partner ecosystem. She will also coordinate with teams across Google to assist Singaporean firms to reimagine their industries and businesses using Google's enterprise-grade cloud AI solutions.

Sia will report to Mark Micallef, Google Cloud's Managing Director for Southeast Asia. Prior to joining Google, she held regional leadership positions at renowned tech companies including Autodesk, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP, and brings more than 30 years of business and software technology leadership experience across Asia. From those roles, Sia spearheaded strategic business engagements and partnerships with companies in various sectors such as retail, telecommunications, financial services and the public sector. In 2014, she was instrumental in the setting up and scaling of human capital consulting company Presence of IT, which was subsequently acquired by Deloitte in 2019.

"Serene joins Google Cloud at an exciting phase of our growth in Singapore, where many organisations are emerging from our Generative AI Innovation Sandboxes with solution prototypes that they are aiming to scale with enterprise-grade safety, security, and privacy," says Mark Micallef, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Google Cloud. "I'm excited that a leader with such extensive industry experience and a consultative approach to solving customers' most critical challenges will deepen our customer and partner relationships, and ensure we continue to meet their digital transformation needs in this highly strategic and important market."

On her part, Sia lauded Google Cloud's initiatives to democratise the benefits of AI in partnership with the Singapore Government. "I'm excited to be joining the company at a moment where we are not only spearheading conversations about the possibilities of AI but actively helping organisations to apply the technology in practical ways," Sia says. "I look forward to building on the success of these initiatives, deepening relationships with our customers, and enabling them to take full advantage of AI while maintaining protection over their intellectual property, adhering to regulations around data security and privacy, and ensuring that their models and applications are safe to use."

On 14 November, Google Cloud became the first multinational corporation hyperscaler to launch data residency for its generative AI capabilities in Singapore, giving organisations the power to store data from their use of Vertex AI Model Garden and Generative AI Studio within the country. This development aids in scaling up the gen AI solution prototypes that have been built, enabling them to serve more clients and employees.

Serene Sia is a leading proponent of doing good, paying it forward and serving with purpose. Since 2018, she has served as an SGTech Councillor, been a committee member of the Women in Tech Chapter of the Singapore Computer Society since 2021, and a board member of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation Centre for Corporate Learning since 2022. She also plays an active part in the FireFly Mission, a non-profit humanitarian organisation run entirely by volunteers.