Asia 21 Young Leaders Engage with Development Management Students
Asia Society Philippines invited Asia 21 Young Leaders, Cecile Dominguez Yujuico and Love Gregorie Perez to give a talk on opportunities in the development sector to the Asian Institute of Management Master’s in Development Management (AIM MDM) class last June 14, 2016.
To kick off the program, Asia Society Philippines’ Executive director Suyin Lee introduced the organization. Global Initiatives Program Officer Kathryn Cardenas introduced the Asia 21 Young Leaders Initiative.
Asia 21 Young Leader Cecile Dominguez Yujuico is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at Evident Communications, a communications and research consulting firm that provides strategic advisory; digital marketing; inbound marketing; content marketing; and social media activations to clients in the private, public and NGO sectors. Cecile is also President of the Conrado and Ladislawa Alcantara Foundation, the Mindanao-based corporate foundation of the Alcantara Group.
She shared that her extensive experience in marketing and communications has helped her lift her advocacy work to new heights. Through her work, she was able to discover new strategies and ideas in getting through to the communities she worked in. Cecile stressed that in the line of development work, one can never be too innovative.
Asia 21 Young Leader Love Gregorie Perez is a senior development practitioner, having worked in social development for over 10 years. Her experience ranges from working with an NGO in direct service in urban poor communities, to social entrepreneurship, to impact investment. Greg is currently a Director at xchange, an angel investment firm and incubator for early stage social enterprises in the Philippines.
Greg explained how her passion for helping the less fortunate and her business values have led her to work in the field of social development. She envisions social enterprises playing a major role and having a bigger impact on the development sector. Based on her background in microfinance and livelihood, she discussed how important social enterprise is when working in the grassroots so that corporations will be encouraged to do business with CSOs and NGOs.
The speakers then opened the floor to a Q&A session where they shared with the audience current trends and programs that they may utilize not only in their Master’s Degree program but most especially in their future career in the sector.