Sharing with you my talk at the Commencement Exercises of the Multiple Intelligence Upper School Batch 4 :
To Founding Directress Ms. Mary Joy Abaquin, Principal Selene Sison-Olvido, Administrators and Faculty, Guests, Parents, Families, and Students – a very good evening to you all.
For the life of me, I never really imagined that I would be where I am today, that I would be doing what i am currently doing. That I would be standing in front of you and sharing my story.
I remember how I felt when I was graduating from High School – hard as it to believe, it was almost two decades ago! It was 1995, the age just as the internet was dawning. I still remember the first time i sent an email to a relative in the US. it blew my mind that after clicking send, my relative would receive my message in under five minutes. And can you imagine the euphoria i felt when i got an instant reply? I literally felt as if i had just discovered fire!
Ah yes, the pre-Viber, pre-Snapchat, pre-WhatsApp era. the age before all the other things we take for granted today – smartphones, ipads, facebook, instagram, selfies, twitter, and hashtags. Which reminds me, do we have a hashtag for this event? How about #MI2014bestgraduatingbatchever? Oh wait, that seems too long …
The transition towards college was a cornucopia of mixed emotions – giddiness, excitement, wonder, and a gnawing sensation of the metaphoric butterflies in my stomach. I felt that I was finally entering “the grown-up world.” I was at the cusp of adult freedom, but it carried with it the burden of owning up to my future. As my good friend Peter Parker always says, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
So … how many here are excited to enter college?
Whatever your reasons for choosing which school, or which course, I hope that you underwent a deeper discernment process than I did. Truth to tell, when I was picking my school and course, I only had three simple criteria : 1. Where can i absolutely excel, given my talents and gifts? 2. What course can give me the highest chances of landing a high-paying job in a large company? and 3. Where are most of my friends going??
This checklist led to me taking a business course in the Ateneo, a degree in BS Management Engineering. I’m highly analytical and wanted to hone my business/corporate skills; All evidence pointed that a degree in M.E. leads towards near-assurance of getting into a big, stable company; and oh, did i mention that my entire barkada had pretty much applied to get in as well? It was the safest possible choice amongst possible choices – and so I took it.
The safest possible choice.
When I was growing up, reading books – and I have to admit, a lot of comic books – was such a major influence on me. I had my friends in the real world. But I also had my fantasy friends. Captain America. Superman. Batman. Spider-Man. They stood for the good. They wanted to make the world a better place. And so as a child, I always longed and yearned and dreamed that like them, I would one day change the world for the better.
And yet here I was, about to graduate from high school, and I had become … practical. Not to say that it was a bad thing. It was just that idealism had become tempered with realism. and fantasies of getting bitten by a radioactive spider, donning a self-made costume, and fighting crime gave way to … picking a course that could land me a high-paying job.
Fast-forward into graduating from college, and all the hype turned out to be true. i was able to get into a large multinational, and my transition from Avengers Academy into the Corporate Rat Race was complete. The fantasy had been shelved, and I dove headfirst into the real world.
And so for seven exciting years, the talents and gifts that I had been given were honed, stretched, and put to full use. It was a very exhilarating time and I was working so, so, so hard. It was a great learning experience peppered with accomplishments, and I was rewarded for it. I was able to climb up the corporate ladder at a fairly rapid pace, rewarded by promotion after promotion after promotion. The career runway in front of me seemed mine for the taking; my bosses reassured me that I was going to go a long, long way.
There was just one problem. A major one actually. I wasn’t really sure if this is what I wanted to do with my life. There was a hole in my heart and i couldn’t make out it’s shape. I truly didn’t know what was missing.
And so at this very confusing time, i entered a community called Life’s Directions – a community of young professionals discerning what paths to take in their lives. It meant taking stock of one’s gifts and truly listening to one’s deepest desires. Of being cognizant of the needs of the world around us. I also started volunteering : Agimat – a retreat for young leaders; iVolunteer – an online network for volunteers; And also – serendipitously – the National Youth Commission, whose chairperson was my long-time friend, eventually my social enterprise co-founder, now-senator Bam Aquino.
By delving into these various activities, i began to peel behind the layers of what was missing in my life.
And true to form, I started reading a lot again. More comic books, yes. But also books of people who took radical choices and took major life pivots in order to do more meaningful work. Bill Drayton, who transitioned from McKinsey into founding Ashoka, the leading community of Social Entrepreneurs in the world; Mark Albion, a corporate young achiever who founded Net Impact which helps MBA graduates positively impact the world around them; And of course, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, who left the environment of his university in order to found Grameen Bank, and concurrently the Microfinancing industry – arguably the largest social business enterprise and model in the world.
I had discovered new superheroes that I aspired to become.
And I realized that my childhood dreams did not really disappear, they were just dormant, waiting to be reawakened.
It was in a meeting for work wherein I got the final wake-up call. Working in a multinational, I had the privilege to join meetings with people from all around the world. And in one such event in Chicago, i found myself with a fairly small group of global senior leaders of the company. I recall it so distinctly – there were around a dozen of ‘Bosses’ in the meeting, and as I was looking at them around the table, i got a glimpse of my potential future if i stayed along the same path – the big house, the security that came with a huge salary, traveling all around the world, and living the expat lifestyle. I even went so far to think that if I work hard, I could probably reach their position in 7 to 10 years; And if i worked really, really hard, pull it off in less than 5.
But i had reached a eureka.
This wasn’t the person I wanted to become. The dream of being a successful corporate executive just wasn’t the life I wanted to end-up living. I yearned to do something different, something more. I wanted to use my talents and gifts to serve. But to serve in a way that will be sustainable for myself and my future family.
There’s a saying that I really like which captures precisely my insight as of this moment. “No amount of walking on the wrong road will take you where you want to go.” Let me repeat that for emphasis – “No amount of walking on the wrong road will take you where you want to go.”
And so for the first time in my life, I opted to let go of safety and decided to risk it all. After all another wise saying goes ‘man cannot discover new islands unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.’
Talents. Skills. Intelligences. More precisely – Multiple Intelligences. These are all gifts that we’ve been blessed with.
Last year I was very humbled to receive an award from the Multiple Intelligence School – this very institution – for Logical-Math Intelligence. I love problem-solving, thinking about abstract ideas, and solving complex computations. But up to that point in my life, I was harnessing my skills for the company – for higher sales, to grab market share, to eat competition for lunch. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, I realized that I wanted to use these same exact gifts – but this time for the benefit of those who have less in life.
Gifts. let’s dissect that wonderful word. Etymologically speaking, it comes from the root word “geb” which means – interestingly enough – “give”. Our talents, skills, and multiple intelligences are gifts. But they truly aren’t gifts until we give them to others.
Gifts are not gifts unless they’re given.
It was clear to me that I wanted a life of service. But it was also clear to me that it had to be within the context of my talents, my intelligence, my gifts. And so I took what I had learned – the rigor and discipline of Management Engineering and the wide array of business skills that I had honed in the corporate world – and applied it to Social Development. It was also clear that I didn’t want service purely as charity – that I could find a way to fuse my personal sustainability with the sustainability of helping. Which means that I would have to start my own business, that I would have to be an entrepreneur. But not just any kind of entrepreneur.
I wanted to start businesses that at their core would fundamentally help other people. Today, that idea has been refined and formed into a model called social entrepreneurship – applying innovative, market-led solutions – essentially creating enterprises – towards solving social problems. It’s a fusion, a convergence of what I was good at, what the world needs, and what I am truly passionate about. The ultimate sweet spot that would comprise a life’s work.
With my very good friend Bam Aquino and like-minded leaders in Business and Social Development, we co-founded Hapinoy, a social enterprise that supports and partners with microentrepreneurs in rural areas. We train Nanay Sari-Sari Store owners and provide them capital towards new business opportunities. To date we’ve trained thousands of Nanays all over Southern Luzon. This year, i’m very happy that we’ve also been given the opportunity to serve in the Yolanda-affected areas of Leyte, helping Nanays get their Sari-Sari Stores back on their feet. But our dreams are much bigger – we imagine helping more than 100,000 Nanays in every very single barangay of the country.
With my wife, Reese Fernandez-Ruiz, Fr. Javy Alpasa, and other young professionals, we founded together Rags2Riches, a social enterprise that strives to lift artisans out of poverty by upcycling scrap materials into high-end fashion and home products. We actually just had our launch this morning for our latest collection, R2R High Seas 
we are also dreaming big in R2R – we envision building a global Eco-ethical brand, one that the country can be truly proud of.
Hapinoy and R2R are not about charity, they are both about helping and great business sense. I stand before you today to share that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive.
It’s been (7) years since i’ve resigned, and all I can say is that I’ve never had a more fulfilling period in my life. It hasn’t been easy – in fact I’ve probably encountered so many more challenges and problems and sleepless nights in this line of work – but it doesn’t really matter because I’m truly, undeniably happy. I wake up every morning excited to go to work – how many people can truly say that in their lives? And more importantly, I never have to ask myself why i’m doing what i’m doing. I just know deep in my heart and in my very core that this is where I should be, and what i should be dedicating the rest of my life towards.
It all just truly, wonderfully makes sense.
Our world is becoming more complex. And problems are getting more wicked, interconnected, and unwieldy. poverty. climate change. geopolitical conflict. the unending changes wrought by technology – so much uncertainty! In fact, the only thing we can be certain of is this – that the world as it is today on your graduation will severely be different in 4 to 5 years when you graduate from college.
Our country is in a period of massive change; the Philippines has landed on the global map as one of the emerging countries of the future. For the past two years we have been one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, and in the world. And yet the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen. How can that not be a major problem to solve? And how can that not present a major opportunity – both for business – and impact?
In the face of all of this – in the greater scheme of things, how and where can you make the greatest good?
This is not a time for small dreams, it is time for bold, radical visions that you must have the relentless persistence – grit – to pursue.
Discover the secret of life : That it is about having big dreams and the courage to pursue them.
Dare to dream big, because it will give you purpose and a seemingly unending wellspring of energy;
Live with passion – it is what will see you through every day of your life.
Don’t be afraid to fail. For without risk, we cannot learn. Failure is necessary for success.
My dearest sincerest wish for all of you Graduates – is that wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you become – I wish that you are truly able to harness your gifts, your intelligences to serve. It is what will give you the gift of happiness, of true happiness
For the parents, trust that you have brought up your children well, that MI has molded them well – and that they will be ready for the challenges that lie ahead of them. Lead them not from the front but support them from the back. Let them toe the line and walk the tightrope, but be ready to catch them during the times that they will fall.
Thank you and again a blessed evening.
