Guest Postwomen
RAVEN HANSON
Born in New Zealand to an English-Polish father and a Canadian Chinese-Nepalese mother, Raven Hanson is truly a child of the world, thanks to having grown up in countries like Hong Kong, Canada, and Australia.
The 1.73m-tall beauty started her career at the age of 18 as a model in Australia and Hong Kong, doing high-end international ad campaigns for brands like Olay, Vidal Sassoon, Samsung, Sprite and Nokia.
Raven also starred as the lead in the short film Still, which was aired at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Following that, she took the leading role in the feature film 3 Cities which will air later this year.
She’s best known to Singaporeans as the bubbly voice on the airwaves on 987 and has conducted interviews for Channel News Asia and 8 Days. She also hosted a segment for the AXN segment of eBuzz and HBO’s First Look.
Now based in Hong Kong, the multi-hyphenate has also contributed nutrition, travel and lifestyle articles to publications like Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, SPY Magazine and Hip Hong Kong, as well as published a fashion and beauty book for teens titled Big Sisters Guide Series.
SIMONE HENG
Simone Heng is a Singaporean-born Australian. She has a degree in Communications and Cultural Studies from Curtin University in Western Australia where she majored in Literary Studies and minored in Performance Studies. In 2005, Simone moved from Perth to Singapore and began her presenting career as a VJ for cable music station Channel [V] International which is aired across South-east Asia and the Middle East. She went on to work in the Philippines, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia and has starred in numerous English-speaking dramas in Singapore. In 2006, she was the brand ambassador for haircare giant Sunsilk in the Philippines and Thailand.
In 2006, Simone was appointed as the face of the Home Box Office network in Asia which has an audience of 300 million subscribers in 24 countries. The energetic movie and entertainment news show, HBO Central, which Simone fronts, makes her one of the youngest and most widely-exposed faces on Asian TV. In April of the same year, Simone became Singapore’s youngest ever national newspaper columnist with her witty Sexless In The City pieces in The New Paper.
In 2007, while completing her Communications degree in Perth (where she has since graduated in the top 1 per cent of students), Simone made her debut in the Australian TV market. She became the newest addition to Channel 9 Perth’s longest-running travel and lifestyle show Postcards WA. Simone is currently based in Singapore, continuing her hosting duties with HBO on HBO Central and now HBO Close Up. She is also filming the second season of her Kid’s Central series Record Breakers.