Inspiring women

October 25, 2016

An afternoon with three women who have challenged status quo, disrupted the usual and transformed lives.

The WomenbizPH, the country’s pioneer organization in policy advocacy for empowering women in business, has again inspired women in its periodic mentoring event called W2W or Women Mentoring Women held last Oct 21, 2016 at Dusit Makati Hotel.

The line up was impressive: Khun Suphajee Suthumpun, Group CEO of Dusit Hotel Group of Thailand, Samilene Pimentel who is the First Filipina to reach the North Pole and Rep. Geraldine Roman, the first transgender to be elected to the House of Representatives.

Khun Suphajee was derailed by events in Thailand and could not come personally but sent a moving video that almost made you forget her physical absence. It was like she was there, anyway. She spoke about having worked in places where gender was not an issue as long as you had the talent and the courage.

Sam Pimentel showed photos of her conquest of the North Pole while asking everyone to imagine the temperature she endured for ten long days—Minus 40 degrees. “Imagine you enter a freezer and you stay there,” she says. The crowd was truly impressed with her youthful exuberance and her desire to now conquer the South Pole. She is also the First Filipino to reach the North pole on skis!

The third speaker was Rep. Geraldine Roman, a very intelligent and practical lady who says “what defines you is not what’s between your legs but what is in your mind and your heart.” She has travelled the world, speaks a few other languages and has lived abroad before finally coming home to render public service. Recently she was honored as one of the Most Inspiring Women of TIME magazine for 2016.

The crowd was very much entertained and informed and of course, inspired. “I always attend these fora to learn a new thing or two,” says Rowie Matti, an educator who regularly comes to WomenBIzPh mentoring events.

“We were happily surprised with the attendance of women and a few men all the way from Clark to as near as DTI and Makati Medical Center,” says Chiqui Go, President of WomenBIzPH. The W2W events are endorsed by Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) as part of Gender and Development(GAD) activities which government agencies can send their people to. “You need to comply with COA rules on the good use of the GAD budget” says former BCDA chair Boots Garcia. “And these events are compliant with use of the budget to send staff to learning events, “ she continues.

The WomenBIzPH plans these events with different themes but mostly on featuring empowered women as exemplars of what it takes to lead, or how to use all your God-given gifts as women.