What were we doing here again?

So, maybe to provide a bit of background on what exactly we were doing in the Phillipines. The general objective was to better understand the economic, cultural and environmental elements of this place; what that looked like - apart from 3 days "sampling tourism" - were days and nights spend meeting with high profile CEOs and business and political leaders, and looking at factories, call centres etc (Call centres here can be put up cheaper than in India! And everyone speaks english)

Probably our most famous meeting was with the ex-President, Cory Aquino. She had an amazing life - her husband was the opposition leader during the Marcos dicatatorship during the 1960s to 1980s, eventually being assassinated when trying to re-enter the country, leading to this massive "People Power" revolution that led her to being inducted as president (despite her wishes!). It was incredible to hear her story.



We met with lots of Government people (though we had to cancel on the president!). Here's from our meeting with the Minsitry of Finance, and some of their catchy acronyms to try and stop tax evaders ...



We met with some amazing CEOs. Here's the CEO of the biggest and best performing company in Philippines, PLDT (phone company).



The Philippines is basically run by about 4 or 5 large familities who, between them, own lots and lots of stuff. Here's the CEO of the Ayala Corporation - Jaime Ayala - a 7th generation leader from his family. They own all these big shopping malls, the 2nd biggest phone company, and, um, stuff ...



... Overall, we had some great meetings, and it was especially cool when, towards the end, the same names kept popping up in different meetings (The CEO/leader we were speaking to would say, "such-an-such is doing some incredible work" and we could say "yeah, we had cocktails with them last night!). Go Study Trips!