Marvin Cheung
Marvin Cheung is Board Member and Head of Research and Strategy at Unbuilt Labs where he co-directs the Center for Global Agenda (CGA) and directs the Venture Strategy Group (VSG). He is a global governance scholar, a business executive, a Global Diplomacy Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and Inclusive Policy Lab Expert at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He has been a featured speaker at the UN General Assembly Science Summit on the methods to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Marvin serves as a special advisor to private sector individuals and organizations. Bringing together his research interests, including the future of technology, the future of research organizations, and the future of global governance, he advises on the ideas, methods, and movements that have the potential to change global dynamics. As a Board Member at Unbuilt Labs, he is also a member of the Asian Leaders Alliance, the Institute of Director’s Policy Voice, and Chairman’s Network, where he regularly presents research to private and public boards of directors. Read The New Antitrust Movement Against Big Tech: What is at Stake and What to Expect.
In 2022, he began his term as Chair of the Global Consortium for Systems Research (GCSR). He succeeded Sebastian Cody, advisor to four successive Directors Generals at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
Since 2021, Marvin’s primary project has been with the UN, under the title Closing the Compliance Gap: System-wide Transformation Methods for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, where he is recommending methods that non-state actors, eg. private sector, civil society, and academia, can employ to advance the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Between 2015 and 2019, Marvin consulted for and advised a wide range of startups. For example, he was an Advisory Board member at a Stealth Mode Software Startup where he advised an F100 AVP Product Manager’s EdTech and LegalTech startup on startup strategy and product management, i.e., user experience, user research, product roadmap, go-to-market strategy, as well as design. He was also a UX Consultant to former Global Directors at McDonald’s, at their startup Miro AI which won the 2019 SXSW Pitch Sports Technology Category.
He began his career in 2014, as a researcher at “Urban Innovations: Smart Cities” by EU-funded program EUAP in partnership with the Austrian Consulate General Hong Kong led by Dr. Stefan Krakhofer (Visiting Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong).
Marvin studied Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, Art, Media, and Technology at the Parsons School of Design, and International Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He completed the Venture Capital Executive Program at Columbia Business School.
He was advised by Lauren Rednisss (Guggenheim Fellow and MacArthur Fellow) at the Parsons School of Design, and H.E. Dr. Yuriy Sergeyev (former elected member of the Security Council and Human Rights Council and Chair of the Sixth Committee on Legal Affairs) at UNITAR.
Visit his LinkedIn profile and his UNESCO page.
