Mahadhir Aziz has recently taken over the charge in driving Malaysia’s digital economy and establishing a digital nation as the newly appointed CEO of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC). He has built a 20-year career in tech serving in various industries, including in financial services as an analyst programmer project officer at AmBank Group; in media, as senior applications developer at the Malay-language daily Utusan Melayu; and in oil and gas, as project manager at Petronas Digital.

Then two years into serving as general manager in the technology hub development division at Cyberview, Mahadhir co-founded and became CEO of Futurise, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cyberview under the Ministry of Finance, and was mandated to oversee the National Regulatory Sandbox (NRS) initiative. Under his leadership, Futurise led the establishment of Malaysia’s first drone-testing zone.

Mahadhir was also involved in updating the regulations surrounding the use of drones in Malaysian skies, which opened up opportunities for drone-related services in various sectors—a move which is expected to lead to more than 5,000 new jobs. When Mahadhir is not working, he enjoys keeping active to maintain good health, which he says enables him to be at top of his game.