David Ko
Executive Vice President, APAC
David Ko is an executive vice president of Asia at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. He is an experienced veteran in public relations and marketing with 15 years of agency and in-house experience in the APAC region.
David oversees Waggener Edstrom Worldwide’s Asia operations, including China, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as a network of affiliates that spans major cities from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur. David is also responsible for expanding the agency’s presence in the region through organic growth or new affiliations.
Before founding his own consultancy, which eventually merged with Waggener Edstrom, David was Asia Pacific director of marketing for Redback Networks Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of networking solutions for the broadband and optical transmission markets. In that capacity, he oversaw Redback’s corporate marketing programs for the Asian region, covering countries extending from Japan and Korea in the north to Australia and New Zealand in the south. Directing a dedicated team of events, PR and field marketing experts based throughout the region, he generated substantial buzz for this NASDAQ-listed company within a short time.
Before Redback, David headed up Cisco Systems Inc.’s North Asia public relations, managing the networking giant’s external image in Korea, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. At Cisco, he helped to drive such high-octane regional PR programs as NetAid and Cisco Networking Academy, and participated in many CEO-level government relations activities involving various Asian heads of state.
In addition to his in-house experience, David spent more than five years in the PR agency field, working at multinationals such as Hill & Knowlton and Edelman International. Before joining Cisco Systems, he was group director of Hill & Knowlton’s technology practice, with overall responsibility for the Greater China region. Client teams that he led serviced Microsoft, BT (formerly British Telecom), AMD, Compuware, Tektronix and Iomega, among many others. At Edelman, he was the senior consultant servicing a portfolio of clients that included AST Computer, EMC, Fujitsu/ICL, and Novell Inc.
A graduate of the Hong Kong Polytechnic (now the Hong Kong Polytechnic University), David is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
