Inspiring impact
AIM alumni talk about using their MBA to be a force for good
Pursuing graduate education can be a stepping stone to a new leadership position in one’s current industry or the start of a journey in an entirely different field. For most MBA graduates, life post-graduation can mean jumping into a new career in consulting, finance, or technology. For others, it can mean going back to their previous organizations and industries and continuing their journey up the corporate ladder, using their newfound skills to introduce new ways of thinking, new products and services, and even new ways of working with people.
For three alumni of the Asian Institute of Management ( AIM), life post- MBA meant choosing a less traditional path, but one that led to new opportunities to use their business and management education to make a positive contribution to society.
Serving at one of the Phl’s largest government agencies
Rey Laguda (Master of Business Management 2000) initially pursued a career in the corporate world, with stints at Jollibee Foods Corp. and First Gen Corp., before eventually serving as the undersecretary for finance and administration for the Department of Education (DepEd) and as the chief of staff to former Education Secretary Br. Armin Luistro.
Laguda shared the program instilled in him an appreciation for the role of business in supporting and encouraging development. “Development management was a mandatory course. In our Human Behavior in Organizations course, we also discussed taking care of people as an important management principle. These courses help reinforce my belief that business and development are always intertwined,” he said.
During his stint at DepEd, Laguda focused on improving the way the agency collected, organized, and utilized information on students, schools, and personnel to better guide resource allocation, program development, and results monitoring. In addition, he strengthened disaster risk reduction and management ( DRRM) within the agency by integrating it into the organization, establishing the specific roles of the different offices within the agency, defining protocol, and integrating DRRM within the curriculum.
“DepEd is the biggest government agency, and it is probably among the biggest organizations in Asia because of its employee size, budget, and customer reach,” shared Laguda. “As such, it is important to have sound management practices and capacities to deliver quality education service at that scale.”
More than process improvements, Laguda is proudest of building a more collaborative culture within the agency— one that transforms as well as transcends the usual bureaucratic quandaries government employees are faced with. “An organization as big as DepEd needs to experience compassion, empathy, and a personal touch from its leaders. While six years was not enough, there was substantial work done to influence leadership styles in the schools, divisions, and regions,” he highlighted. “We tried to demonstrate a brand of servant leadership where people could open up, relate, and work closely with their superiors towards a shared mission.”
Laguda was recently appointed the executive director of the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), a business sector-led social development organization focused on alleviating poverty. While still new to the organization, he is now looking at how to push for an inclusive business model that would benefit both businesses and the communities where PBSP is present. “All of our future initiatives will have to be done with a view to ensuring sustainability of both the programs and of PBSP as a whole. It’s about making sure we continue to be responsive and relevant to the needs of our country and our people,” Laguda said.
Pursuing a career at an int’l non-profit
Isa Eguia (Master of Business Administration 2015) has attributed the start of her career at a non-profit to AIM’s sense of community and a campus culture that encourages caring for others. On their first week of class, their cohort went on a retreat and visited prisoners. “Our professors were very intentional. The purpose of the trip was to remind us of the reality that there are many people who are often unseen and that it was our job, as future MBA graduates, to make sure that we helped them too,” she shared.
During her stay at AIM, she joined the Hult Prize, a contest that encourages universities and business schools to develop social entrepreneurshipbased solutions to societal problems. That year, the participating teams were asked to develop solutions to improve early childhood education in urban slums.
When they were being mentored for the competition, Eguia shared that one of their professors talked about how he had grown up in poverty and how education made a difference in his own life. “When you have professors like that, whose lives have been directly impacted by such societal issues, you can be certain that the lessons we are taught go way beyond the caseroom and are seared into our hearts long after graduation.”
Eguia currently works as a donor relations officer for the International Care Ministries in Hong Kong. One of her main takeaways from her MBA stint is the importance of asking the right questions to better understand both the market and the customer.
“A key skill taught to us during the MBA that I have to use in order to be successful is understanding the market,” noted Eguia. “I have to make sure that not only do I package what our charity does and communicate it in a manner that resonates with our donors, but also that I connect their motivations and desires to their giving experience so that they are emotionally satisfied. It’s about making sure that our donors feel glad when they give because we’ve designed their giving in a manner that resonates with them.”
One of Eguia’s most memorable stories from her work at International Care Ministries was when they had a donor who gave the proceeds of his sister’s memorial fund to the organization and later on asked to meet the families and children who benefitted from the donation. “In this sense, shared value was created not only because the money donated fund our programs that help the ultra-poor, but also because our donor was able to experience joy in his giving.”
Leading the future of local foundation
For Cecilia Nakpil- Roxas ( Master of Business Administration 2013), chief project director of the Roxas- Kalaw Foundation for the Eradication of Poverty, being a secondgeneration leader meant figuring out new ways to address societal problems.
Nakpil- Roxas shared that the AIM MBA nurtured her existing sense of social responsibility and provided her with the skills, frameworks, and teamwork exercises necessary to develop programs and help run the foundation.
“AIM equipped me with the tools to act on my sense of social responsibility — to think big and long-term, to have clear goals and objectives, and to assess and measure impact,” shared Nakpil- Roxas. “An important skill that you pick up [in the program] is learning to look at a situation from different angles and perspectives and to really try to put yourself in the shoes of others. This helps tremendously in managing expectations and outcomes.”
“At AIM, you get accustomed to working with a competent and lean team that is output- based, good with time management, and diverse in their mental models, approaches, and strategies. This cultivates discipline and flexibility and builds up your confidence to think that you can execute most anything given the support and competencies of your team,” added Nakpil-Roxas.
The Roxas-Kalaw Foundation focuses on deploying a nation- building program to co-create, develop, and cultivate local entrepreneurial ecosystems and sustainable local economies. Their framework, Ecosystem-based, Community-centered, Sustainability and Organization Management ( ECSOM) demands an assessment of the health of each community (economic, social and environmental) instead of prescribing any standard, one-size-fits-all solution.
The foundation plans to implement a pilot project in Bulacan. One of the key components of the project is a food- first policy program where the communities will be the primary consumers of what is grown. They will also be taught best practices in agriculture and livestock rearing. The communities will then be provided with technology applications such as precision agriculture to increase productivity, or taught skills like crop diversification on modular smart farms to move towards more innovative farming methods.
When asked about the value that the AIM MBA brings to non- profit work, she remarked, “An MBA equips you with the tools to broaden your perspective, opening yourself up to a whole new spectrum of choices that you may not even have known were available to you. This allows you to make informed decisions, and while this grounds you it also pushes you to be more creative in both principle and execution. It also gives insight into how the corporate world works. In this day and age, I think NGOs now realize the importance of innovating their business models — the traditional approach is no longer appropriate; there are some aspects of corporate models that can be integrated in order to create a more sustainable organization.”