Natalie Lowe is the CEO and Founding Partner of The Orangeblowfish, an independent creative and branding agency. Headquartered in Shanghai with an international team, she offers brand strategy expertise to businesses seeking a strong market presence in China and APAC; combining consumer-focused business strategies with award-winning branding campaigns.
The Orangeblowfish unleashes the power of creativity using storytelling, art, space and technology to get client brands talked about. The Orangeblowfish creates immersive brand-led experiences for Fortune 500 and local brands such as Cartier, LinkedIn, L’Oréal Group, Arc’teryx, Kolon Sport, Colgate-Palmolive, Marriott, Hilton, and more.
Born and raised in Australia, with Chinese heritage, Natalie moved to Asia in 1999 with a drive to find her passion and broaden her horizons. Before moving to Shanghai, she lived in Singapore and Hong Kong and has consulted on projects in Europe and the US. In 2012, doing well career-wise and starting a family, she wanted to take charge of her path and push boundaries with a different creative business concept. She took the bold step of manifesting her future and The Orangeblowfish was created.
If you ask Natalie what The Orangeblowfish does, she says, “we do cool shit”. With her at the brand strategy helm, and her partner heading the creative side, that is exactly what they do. She also loves sharing her ideas, is an in-demand speaker on a wide range of topics and is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. She recently presented a TEDx Talk on ‘Creativity, “Rizz”, and EQ in leadership.
Cadence is the Co-Founder and COO of SideChef, where she has led bilingual teams in Shanghai for over 11 years. SideChef is an all-in-one home cooking platform that partners with global retailers, publishers, CPG brands, and kitchen appliance companies like Walmart, Amazon, Marks & Spencer, Nestle, and LG. It offers users a seamless cooking experience, featuring personalized meal planning, shoppable recipes, and smart kitchen connectivity. SideChef has inspired millions of home-cooked meals worldwide and has been named Best App of the Year by Google and Favorite Cooking App by The New York Times. The company completed its Series B funding round in early 2023.
Hardenbergh has been featured in a Taobao campaign promoting rural entrepreneurship in Guizhou, spoken about female entrepreneurship at Disney, and served on the volunteer committee for the Nanjing Youth Olympics. Originally from Boston, she holds a BA from Williams College and a graduate degree from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, part of Johns Hopkins SAIS. Passionate about personal finance, she leads workshops empowering women to manage and invest their money, believing that financial literacy and access to tools like investing are essential for achieving equality and justice.
Hardenbergh lives in Shanghai with her husband and their 3-year-old son. She enjoys reading, traveling, and swimming in the ocean.
Lydia Sheng is CEO of Mentis Aviation Group (MAG), a company she founded in 2018 to leverage the growth potential of the aviation industry in China and S.E. Asia. Her vision for MAG was simple: as China and/or Asia Pacific commercial fleets entered retirement ages, she wanted to buy the planes, recycle components, and re-sell or lease out the engine packages and other tradeable systems to customers around the world.
Over the next few years, she pulled in piece by piece of this complex business structure, which required not only China maintenance and teardown operations, but also global relationships, strategic advisors, and staff to help serve as a pipeline for obtaining commercial aircraft and trading commercial aircraft parts.
Today, MAG’s operation is valued at more than $15 Million and employs approximately 20 professionals and support staff around the world. Under Lydia’s leadership, MAG has grown and maintains a China Commercial Services operation in Shanghai, an aircraft teardown operation at the Hefei Xingqiao International Airport, as well as an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. MAG’s business leadership team is located around the world in the USA, Europe, Singapore, and China.
When Lydia is not overseeing MAG as CEO, she enjoys playing mahjong, golfing, working out, or just relaxing with husband, Ken, her Yellow Lab, Easy, as well as her little princess of a cat, also known as Princess.
Lydia is from Haining, Zhejiang Province, received a bachelor’s degree from Singapore Management University, and an eMBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology. She is fluent in Mandarin and English.
