Amazing Raz
From rallying his fellow students to fight for their rights in his younger days, Rouen Abel Raz has since transitioned to using his built-in charm to lead sales teams achieve their targets and build a better future.
“You don’t lose your idealism, especially the ideas. You sometimes must adjust them to where you are.”
HE was a firebrand student leader and campus journalist back in the day.
Rouen Abel V. Raz was an Accountancy student when former senator Ninoy Aquino was fatally shot in 1983.
Returning from exile, the senator’s killing was the tipping point that accelerated change in our nation’s history.
Raz, then 19, documented his fellow Bedans’ participation in the political struggle as a staff writer and later news editor of The Bedan, the official student paper of San Beda College in Manila and national vice president of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines.
He’d later park his pen and turn in his Press ID after he got elected president of the student council and led students of the Benedictinerun all-boys school in staging walkouts and protest marches against the Marcos regime.
While having his hands full running a student government, and organizing events and activities on and off campus, Raz continued to dutifully attend to his responsibilities as a student in San Beda’s Accountancy program, which is said to have one of the toughest academic standards.
Raz graduated from college with academic distinction and was given the Rector’s Award, the highest commendation for student leaders.
Following his graduation, Raz refocused his priorities and concentrated on reviewing for the CPA Board exams.
“I promised my mom that after graduation, I would concentrate on my board exams,” he recalled. “So then, I was really focused on passing.”
While preparing for the board exam, Raz had to restrain himself from rejoining the parliament of the streets as he attended review classes in a review center along Claro M. Recto Avenue in Manila’s University Belt, which was the staging area for rallyists marching toward Mendiola.
His discipline and perseverance paid off as he placed 20th in the CPA Board exams a few months before President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. called for a snap presidential election in 1985.
Torn between rejoining his activist-mates and kick-starting a promising career, the newly minted “yuppie” — then a popular slang for “young urban professionals” — chose to balance his books and reconcile with the pragmatism of professional life.
Blue chip talent
As a blue-chip corporate talent, Raz was targeted by Sycip Gorres Velayo & Co., or SGV, the nation’s biggest auditing firm, where he became senior auditor while only in his early 20s.
Crossing over to the establishment, Raz said he has not lost his “nationalist” mindset.
“I said to myself, I could probably still have that, but still, I want to make sure that I could prepare for my future and the future of my family,” he said.
In the years that followed, Raz pursued a career in accountancy with notable firms such as AGJ Securities and International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI).
Seeing his potential in areas outside the ledger, his bosses in the Soriano group moved
him to Kagitingan Publishing — which then publishes The Manila Standard — to handle the company’s sales and operations.
Raz used his schoolboy charm to bag notable contracts such as the printing of the Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper of the US armed forces, as well as official publications of San Miguel Corp. and Meralco.
In 1993, he joined Avon Cosmetics, where he rose from sales manager in Tacloban to director of operations where he was tasked to lead the company’s transition to a new sales model.
His foray into real estate and the property market started in 2010 when he joined Robinsons Land as vice president for sales and marketing.
Raz later hopped on to Taft Properties, Dataland and now RHK Land where he handles its day-to-day operations as general manager (GM).
RHK Land — a joint venture between Robinsons Land and Hong Kong Land (RHK) — is into the development of townships for starter families who wish for bigger spaces, or “empty nesters” who are cutting down on space after they suddenly found their subdivision homes too big for them.
RHK Land is also vetting the C-5 strip as a new business corridor.
As GM, Raz must channel his sales team’s youthful idealism with “the right kind of energy, motivation, training and support” to deliver sales.
“In this type of role, you have to listen to the frontliners and give them the right incentives,” he said.
Feeling the people’s pulse is something he learned as a campus journalist and as a student leader.
Raz said sales of condominium units at Robinsons Land’s Bridgetowne Destination Estate at the boundary of the cities of Pasig and Quezon City revealed the consistently healthy appetite of condo buyers.
“Buyers from 10 years ago are now looking to upgrade their units. Investors are putting down capital to flip units for renting out or for resale. New end users still want their own digs. It’s still bullish,” he said.
“Buyers want a location accessible to public transportation and support services, such as hospitals and schools,” he observed.
Luxury real estate fetches Generation X buyers in the 45 to 55 age range. But Raz is leading the way in attracting more empty nesters, who can trade in their spacious houses in subdivisions for more manageable living in condominiums.
For Raz, big business and social responsibility inherently go together. The former can put up the large-scale investments to encourage wide social support for global movements, such as green and sustainable living.
The real estate market is braced for this inevitable trend.
“Part of our plans is to build electric vehicle charging stations in the parking units and areas. Eventually, we are seeing the wide use of electric cars and electric motorcycles. We’re looking at sustainability,” he said.
Future unit designs will be more responsive to energy savings.
“We are also exploring technical ways to keep the [condo] units cooler and insulated from heat,” he said.
Such redesign, he added, will drive down air-conditioning use and energy consumption.
“In the Tower 2 [of our latest development], we are introducing 14 square meters of open space, a foyer before the entrance,” he described.
The pandemic has given rise to an army of workers from home, and RHK believes in giving residents a fresh outdoor ambiance for this modern work arrangement.
Guiding people
Being ensconced in business which is far opposite from the life he lived as an idealistic individual does not mean Raz has managed to push aside his social conscience.
On the contrary, “you don’t lose it, especially the ideas. You sometimes must adjust to where you are.”
“While I am working with the big businesses, for example, I still have to make sure that in my social media posts, in the way I deal with my co-associates, look at society, and relate to families and friends, I am espousing the right ideals.”
He said he uses his professional life as a channel for aiding social mobility.
“You are guiding people to move to a higher level, to provide for their families. It’s the same in the real estate business,” he said.
Raz views into the horizon influence his management of human resources and the steady rhythm of his professional life in the near future.
Thus, the collective ethos — imprinted in him during his student activism days — reigns. And along with it, a realistic take on corporate life:
“Just do what you have to do. You can go up the corporate ladder that way. Hard work is the primary discipline, as is being digitally connected and building up your connections.”