Zia Zaman joined MetLife in July 2014 as the Chief Innovation Officer for the Asia region. In his role, Zia is responsible for leading LumenLab, the industry-first innovation center, and steering the innovation agenda for the Asia region. He is a member of MetLife’s Asia Leadership Group and is based in Singapore.
Zia joined MetLife from SingTel, where he spent 3 years, more recently as the Chief Strategy Officer and VP of Emerging Businesses for SingTel’s Group Enterprise. He also co-led the acquisition of US-based Amobee, jumpstarting SingTel’s entry into the mobile advertising market.
Prior to SingTel, Zia was the Chief Strategy Officer for LG Electronics North America during 2008-2011 and also served as the Chief Marketing Officer at FAST where he successfully positioned FAST as a leader in the enterprise search space which culminated in a US$1.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft in 2008. At Gartner, a research and advisory firm known for its “crystal ball”, Zia ran the North American strategy consulting practice during 2003-2006. In the earlier part of his career, Zia was a member of the M&A team at Sun Microsystems. Zia has occupied various board positions at tech startups and was a board member on Viking. He currently sits on the Board of the Energy Market Authority of Singapore.
Zia holds an MBA from Stanford’s GSB. He also has an undergraduate bachelor’s of science degree from MIT in electrical engineering and a master’s of science degree in operations research, also from MIT. Zia is married with two children and lives in Singapore.