43 Most Inspirational Linkedin Icons In Malaysia You Should Follow Right Now

Creating content for the sake of creating content won’t help you grow, it will create noise surrounding you instead. Not only it is annoying, your brand won’t look good either. People will see you as inconsistent, with no real value to offer. They will quietly stay away from you as a result of it.

Similar to content, having just about anybody and everybody on board your LinkedIn network will create the similar type of noise too on your News Feed. You won’t learn new stuff, only rants. Further, your target to build a great authority within your subject will face huge challenges due to the fact that your network of connections isn’t consistent. It will be very difficult for you to build engaging conversations too. Without engaging conversations, it will be tougher for you to convert them into paid customers.

It’s time to revisit your LinkedIn connections and who you should follow for inspiration. For me, I’d rather follow people who I can learn from. These are the people who seldomly expect anything in return, as they truly embrace the pay-it-forward belief.

These people aren’t mainstream. They’re neither a famous celebrity nor a corporate hotshot, yet they are inspirational, approachable, active, always sharing a great piece of advice and most of all trusted by their own followers in their very own way. This is a list of great iconic people you must follow on LinkedIn in Malaysia if you really want to go far on your personal LinkedIn journey.

I quite don’t follow Tier-1 so-called leaders too, except for a few, just too much hype. I’d rather follow the real ones who offer real values. These are the people who don’t share copy-paste content, but authentic ones that come from their heart. This is why I follow them, quietly.

You’ve not heard some of these names before. They may look average to your eyes, but not to mine.

1. Major Dr Prebagaran Jayaraman (R). Together with his team, he helps dropouts to be employable again through education. The challenges are obvious but to him, it isn’t impossible. If this isn’t noble enough, I just don’t know what is.
2. Hanie and George Bohlender. Hanie is a career coach, and George is an inspiring advocate for Islamic and Responsible Finance. While Hanie is running around the country, helping corporate executives, organisations, fresh graduates, mothers and even students to find their way into employability, George, on the other hand, is busy empowering his community on the Islamic finance related seminars. They are among the hardcore believer of the pay-it-forward way of living.
3. Dr Frank J. Peter. The most-wanted guru in Malaysia when it comes to the digital marketing subject. He is certified and can teach you on anything on Google, branding and digital marketing.
4. Dr Mazlan Abbas. Malaysia’s very own Internet-of-Things, IoT guru. He is also being named as one of the most influential IoT leaders in the world. I hope he’s not thinking of migrating anytime soon.
5. Saw Ann Ping. There are no real-deal recruitment Avengers than Saw Ann Ping. She shares her heart out mostly on tips, tricks, challenges and inspiring success stories on LinkedIn almost every single day, covering Malaysia’s recruitments and HR scenes.
6. Suraya Kulop Abdul Rahman. She’s one of the iron ladies attached to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Malaysia, MITI preparing for the upcoming APEC 2020 meeting to be held in Kuala Lumpur. I see her as the next Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz.
7. Roberto Cumaraswasmy. A great marketer, using a mixture of video and article talking about all things branding and marketing. He positioned himself as an on-demand Chief Marketing Officer.
8. Masni Mustafa. She left her high flying job as a Director of HR in a public listed company just for the sake of seeking balance in life. Now she is a Learning Strategist and runs various seminars nationwide. She regularly writes about her opinions and ideas related to the local HR industry.
9. Xavier Mah. One of the PR, branding and marketing strategists who religiously sharing the video on the subjects. He loves to share his interview sessions with top influencers in Malaysia talking about tips, tricks and ideas.
10. Dr Rezal Ahmad. Not many people realise that things that they’re using in their daily lives are being made through a nanotechnology. Dr Rezal has been travelling the world and all around the country to shout awareness about this. The potential of this industry can contribute billions of dollars to the Malaysian economy. He helms NanoMalaysia actually.
11. Boonsiri Somchit. One rare example of the Girl Power term is Boonsiri Somchit. She has done it all. Inspiring to the younger generations through social media, TEDx Talk, speaking to the small and large crowd, networking, writing a bestselling book, you name it.
12. A J Minai. The one and the only person who looks far beyond Millennials. He is working day-in-day-out helping not only Millennials but also Gen Z in finding a path towards being relevant. Oh yes, he looks like Hrithik Roshan too.
13. Koh Mui Han. Week-in week-out he is always in a classroom somewhere teaching university students on the topic of employability via the digital approach – LinkedIn. He reviews LinkedIn profiles on the daily basis non-stop, helping students to go out there with the right leg in. If you wish to know how a real hero looks like, just look at Mui Han.
14. Zulkifli Abd Jalil. He runs seminars throughout Malaysia, focusing more on emceeing, PR and marketing. He is one of the ex-anchor at TV3 Malaysia Hari Ini. His team of coaches are real superpower names in the local emceeing industry.
15. Vimala Suppiah. There has been not a single day she doesn’t share her wisdom and powerful ideas and opinions through LinkedIn captions and quotes. She is extremely engaging especially in sharing her thoughts via comments on other people’s content too.
16. Irwan A. Rahman. Each day he updates his LinkedIn status with inspiring quotes which almost all of them are easily relatable in our daily life. He knows how to bring people back to earth.
17. Dr Sudeep Mohandass. Dr Sudeep has been running a non-profit organisation for years, and extremely knowledgeable in this vertical. In other words, he is a real-deal guru when it comes to the non-profit related topics. He writes often and regularly been invited to speak too.
18. Emi Idura Che Hashim. Extremely talented professional image consultant, she is certified and qualified to teach people about it. She’s hardly known to average people like us, but very popular among celebrities and corporates.
19. Badrie Bob Abdullah. The guy who single-handedly makes Universiti Utara Malaysia’s Othman Yeop Abdullah Graduate School of Business, UUM OYAGSB known big time on social media. We may not have heard of UUM before on LinkedIn, but now it seems that UUM OYAGSB is taking over LinkedIn Malaysia’s news feed via their activities.
20. Dr Wendy Liew. An iconic personal branding guru, regularly been invited by large corporations to share thoughts on the topic. She shares great short tips and quotes on LinkedIn every single week non-stop.
21. Alita Abdullah. Woman of Steel, that is Alita. She travels up north, south, Sabah and Sarawak to teach micro and small business entrepreneurs on how to do it right in having their online presence. She covers branding right until the end, how to acquire paid customers.
22. Nadiah Tan Abdullah. Her position may be way up there, but she is truly a grounded person. She helms the Group HR team in one of the largest property developers in the country. She writes, speaks in conferences and shares her insights even in a small gathering too. She is so inspirational until people are seeing her as the face of the HR industry in Malaysia.
23. Laurence Yap. Laurence is the male version of Nadiah Tan Abdullah. The guy-version face of HR industry in Malaysia.
24. Shamini Manikam. She is the maestro when it comes to tech training. She also hosted LinkedIn Local Singapore and LinkedIn Local Professional in Kuala Lumpur.
25. Shadaitul Intan. Intan is a learning strategist, running her own gig helping corporations, fresh graduates especially the SL1M fellas.
26. Johardy Ibrahim. A very practical writer who writes not only inspiring stories about Malaysians, but also he embedded something for us to think about that truly reflects ourselves. That’s why he is the editor of Utusan Malaysia’s Business Desk.
27. Bob Low. He networks a lot, meeting iconic people and have them into his video. He doesn’t realise that he is also an icon himself.
28. Adit Rahim. Adit is a firm believer of the Pay-It-Forward way of living. He is a person who will think deeply first before talking or writing something out. And that makes him such an inspiring leader.
29. Kenneth Chan. This guy is everywhere. In a single day, he can be in multiple places. He is extremely active networking physically and through his LinkedIn too. A real-deal networker.
30. Ahmad Sanusi Husain. Ahmad Sanusi doesn’t write much, but his messages and posting touch deep into our souls through visuals. All of them are inspiring.
31. Gholamali Shamskhoozani, Alish. People call him Alish, he’s the host of the LinkedIn Local all over Malaysia. He doesn’t produce content often, yet he is the intermediary between content creator and the audience. He basically interviews people.
32. Farah Naqui. She used to run Lelong.my marketing gigs, now she leads a team at Nubex. Her inspirational weekly marketing ideas are the reason why her followers are going strong.
33. Andrew Teoh and Adeline Teo. This young couple runs their own boutique digital marketing agency. Andrew is a digital marketer while Adeline is an avid translator. Their largest customer is Netflix, how’s that. And their LinkedIn sharing stuff is just awesome.
34. Emilia Zainol. A high flying entrepreneur who is fueling the growth of the HR industry in Malaysia.
35. Mohana Arumugam. Mohana recently decided to take a short break from her corporate career. She is one of the top investment bankers in Malaysia.
36. Afiq Murad. People remember Afiq by his blue-framed glasses that he wears. At a very young age still, yet extremely active networking with the right group of people especially from LinkedIn.
37. Asim Qureshi. Asim is an entrepreneur who is in a noble adventure of helping other entrepreneurs to grow. You will be amazed by his LinkedIn set of postings. They’re not only inspiring but also make you think deeper about your own very entrepreneurship adventure.
38. Nazlina Quadir. Not many people are as influential as Nazlina in the tech world, here in Malaysia. She writes, speaks and codes!
39. Azwan Baharuddin. If Accenture is the Avengers, then Azwan is Nick Fury. He said that during an interview with a magazine. From that, you know that he isn’t a conventional guy. He is the big boss who helms Accenture Malaysia.
40. Ishak Karim. Ishak is one of the senior management guys at Infineon, but he doesn’t quite act like one on LinkedIn. He acts more like a father, putting aside his position to help bring his followers up as a capable person. Talking about his past experience and insights, he knows how to make you realise that there are more to you than meets the eye.
41. Abdul Haleem. An extremely busy big boss at Accedo TV, but always make time for his connections either physically or via his inspiring LinkedIn updates.
42. Dr Mohd Zulkefeli Mat Jusoh. You won’t see a Dean in one of the well-known universities in Malaysia that is so cool. He is one of the very few Deans that rocks!
43. Mohd Rizal Hassan. One of the NLP gurus who isn’t scared to speak his heart through his inspiring LinkedIn posting.