The Ayalas investment in education
It is, by any measure, an honor: this week, I accepted the Gawad Flora A. Ylagan Award for Eminent Women, given by the National Teachers College in memory of the woman who co-founded the school in 1928 alongside Jose P. Laurel, later a Philippine president. But the award itself isn't really the story.
What stayed with me were the stories of some of the graduates being honored — one a 40-year-old who'd delayed her own education for years so her younger siblings could finish theirs first. There’s also a single mother who built a degree around a job and a household most people would have called a full plate on its own. NTC has been quietly producing stories like theirs for nearly a century, long before anyone was pitching it as a strategy.
Because it is a strategy now, and a deliberate one. NTC — one of the country's oldest teacher-training institutions — will mark its centennial in three years, but the more interesting year is 2018, the year Ayala Corporation's education arm acquired 96% of the school, with Fred Ayala managing it.
Prior to that, Ayala had already spent six years building APEC Schools, a chain of standalone private high schools engineered specifically for the C and D market — students sharp enough to belong anywhere, held back only by tuition and, often, bus fare.
Filipino education has spent decades split between overcrowded public schools and private schools priced for the top decile. Ayala's bet is that the biggest unmet demand sits in the wide, underserved middle — and that a hundred-year-old teacher's college, of all things, is the anchor that makes the math work.
A SALN folded into a wedding proposal
Robina Gokongwei-Pe turned 65 this July, and true to form, she marked it by being everywhere, holding court, and, by her own admission, thoroughly maritesing about everyone in the room.
If you know Robina, you know this is a compliment. Few executives could be chairman of a listed retail empire by day and hold the most entertaining seat at a party by night quite like she does.
I caught her in her element at a bridal shower, of all places — for Lala Rimando, the veteran business journalist known for her sharp reporting for Rappler and Esquire Philippines. Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, Robina's sister and the founder of Summit Media, hosted the shower at her home, and friends flew in from wherever they'd scattered to just to be there.
Cooky Chua, the Color It Red frontwoman whose voice defined a generation of OPM radio, performed for the crowd. Lisa, joking of course (or was she?), floated the idea of a stripper. It did not survive contact with the guest list, which included a Bible study contingent anchored by voice coach Joyce Titular.
I loved watching Lala Rimando from afar fall in love and finally decide to tie the knot. Through our decades-old friendship, we have exchanged heartbreaks, almost convinced that strong, independent women will never find happiness in relationships, something that Robina also attested to. I am proud to say that the journalist with a sharp pen has proven me wrong.
The best material of the night came from the bride-to-be herself. Asked why she calls her fiancé "sweetheart" and nothing more inventive, Lala didn't miss a beat: she'd already used up every other pet name on people who came before him.
She met him late, well past the age she'd stopped expecting to, and he did the thing that would win over any finance-adjacent family — he handed her parents his SALN when he asked for her hand. A journalist who has spent a career asking other people hard questions about disclosure apparently demanded full transparency in her own courtship, too, and got it.
Boardroom Tea comes out Wednesdays