China

Thomas Crampton

As Asia-Pacific director of social media for Ogilvy & Mather, Thomas Crampton heads a team stretching across 23 cities in 15 Asian territories that helps companies conceive, develop and execute strategies in Social Media.

Prior to joining Ogilvy, Mr. Crampton spent 18 years as a globetrotting newspaper correspondent, mainly for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, reporting from five continents and dozens of countries.

Passionately involved in digital since 2004, he writes a widely read blog, thomascrampton.com, and is a frequent keynote speaker and moderator at high profile conferences around the world, from the World Economic Forum in Davos to Le Web in Paris.

He has lectured on new media at numerous universities, including Stanford University, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, Keio University in Japan and the National University of Singapore.

While at the International Herald Tribune, Mr. Crampton launched the newspaper’s first blog, wrote a weekly column about Asia, was a Paris-based feature writer on media and technology, covered the 2004 US presidential election for The New York Times, reported on the 1997 Asian financial crisis from Thailand, the SARS outbreak from Hong Kong, the civil war in Sudan, rebel fighting in Sri Lanka, Taiwan’s largest earthquake, US hurricanes, the Cannes Film Festival and many more topics.

Currently on the board of the The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong, Mr. Crampton has served as president of that club as well as president of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand and on the board of the New York-based Overseas Press Club.

In addition to publisher’s awards from The New York Times and citations from Amnesty International for his articles and photography, Mr. Crampton has served as a judge for numerous journalism awards and worked to promote freedom of expression and the training of journalists. He has served as an awards judge for the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers, the Society of Publishers in Asia editorial awards, the Southeast Asian Education Ministers Organization and numerous others.

He is co-founder of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Charity Fund that has raised more than US$4 million to support the higher education of disadvantaged children from the Po Leung Kuk. Check out our amazing scholarship winners here!

Mr. Crampton was educated in the United States at the University of Virginia, in Ireland at Trinity College, Dublin and in France at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. He speaks English, French, Thai and is learning Mandarin Chines