RICO HIZON

INTERNATIONAL NEWS ANCHOR - BBC

EVERY DAY, 350 MILLION VIEWERS ARE GREETED

BY A WARM AND STRAIGHTFORWARD FILIPINO ACCENT. “Hello and welcome to Newsday on BBC,” beams the confident Rico Hizon. With the world’s attention focused on Asia and the business markets, it seems apt that a Filipino trained in the trading floors of the Philippine Stock Exchange should be one of the BBC’s leading Asian personalities.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, posits that success happens at the intersection of extraordinary preparation (about 10,000 hours) and opportunity. It is no different for Rico who unabashedly reveals, “My career began at the very bottom of the ladder. I wasn’t ‘discovered’ and simply given a slot in the news room. I started as a production assistant tasked with making coffee, writing and printing scripts for a children’s show called Uncle Bob’s Lucky Seven Club. Can you imagine anything further away from BBC than that? Yet I dared to dream big. I imagined myself being part of an international news organization. And I put in the extra hours, hard work and perspiration to make it happen.” Preparation may be thematic to many success stories but Rico is convinced that his Filipino values and upbringing are the true variables that made his career.

Rico proudly shares, “Now might be the best time to be Asian but there was never a moment when it wasn’t a great time to be a Filipino. We are among the most well-travelled people in the world. Long before the advent of budget airfares, our kababayans have explored every inch of the planet. Anywhere you go there is a Filipino. From Pyongyang to Bucharest, from Mt. Everest to Mt. Kilimanjaro, you will find a footprint left behind by a Pinoy who, for various reasons (whether economics or wanderlust), found the courage to go and see the wonders that the world has to offer. And we are also the most adaptable. We don’t simply go to a foreign land and carry on like we’re still back home. We take the best practices of that culture and make it our own.”—MY