Change-Makers

Bazaar’s league of extraordinary women this year features individuals and teams who took a long, hard look at the needs of our communities and stepped up to the challenge.

- Stacey Rodrigues

CHARMAINE SEAH-ONG

Founder and General of Brand & Merchantry, and Co-founder of Elementary Co.

“For as long as I can remember, my parents have been very involved in the community,” says Charmaine Seah-Ong, 38. “Be it volunteer work, fundraising or mentoring, they were constantly taking on multiple projects, and made it a point to get my brothers and I involved, even though we were just little kids.”

It is no wonder then, that when she co-founded her branding and marketing agency Elementary Co. with husband Derek Ong in 2013, she took on numerous social good projects, and used the team’s creativity and network for the greater good.

One of the latest projects the company contributed to was the #HOMEFORALL Migrants initiative by the Collective of Migrant Efforts, which sought to raise funds to provide 20,000 migrant workers with rations over 10 days. Seah-Ong and her team joined forces with Kari Tamura Chua of SamaSama to get the word out about the fundraiser.

“With the help of visual storytelling studio 8EyedSpud, we got the artwork done up to effectively communicate the enormous task that the initiative had at hand, and reached out to nearly a hundred thought leaders, key opinion leaders, media personalities and even PR agencies within two days,” she shares. “There was no question about it—we knew it was something we needed to do.”