I've had four or five avatars. Strategist, poet, planner across Asia Pacific and the world, and now CEO. I used to say, half joking, that a portion of my soul is still trying to find my body.
Maybe that's what a life like this is: parts of yourself catching up with other parts of yourself. Here's how they finally met.
1 · Iskolar ng bayan/Scholar of the nation
I've always been a bit of a rebel. I was raised by the nuns of St. Scholastica's — staunch feminists who will march against human rights violations, whoever holds power. Then the University of the Philippines, main campus at Diliman, Quezon City, We are often referred to as Iskolar ng Bayan: scholars of the nation.
With that name comes a deeply felt sense of responsibility. You have obligations of service to the country, and to your countryfolk. We started our service early. In the cramped office of our student organization, UP ICTUS, we tutored children from marginalized families in our community and raised scholarships that carried them all the way through college. I didn't have the words for it then. Now I'd call it the first structure I ever helped build: one that lets someone meet their own agency. The heart of service didn’t stop pulsing at graduation. I knew one day it would call me back home.
A UP blue book, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Honor. Excellence. A student number in place of a name for our exams, and a 1, the highest mark there is.
St. Scholastica's, fifth grade. The first microphone.
2 · By day, strategy. By night, poems
For twenty years I lived abroad and planned brands for the world: Ogilvy across Asia Pacific and globally, Saatchi in North America, a Clio along the way. I learned how people decide, and what moves them when no one is looking.
At night I learned it the other way. I was a member of the louderARTS Project in New York, featured on its Monday night UPPERCASE series in April 2013, and an adviser to its board. I read at open mics across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens — once in a poet friend's living room that ran past midnight — and in Paris, where my poem "You are not five or fifteen" appeared in Paris Lit Up.
By day, strategy. By night, poems. I thought they were two lives. They were one education.
3 · Coming home
At the end of 2018, after twenty years abroad, it was time to come home. I wanted to take everything I'd learned and plant seeds that would spark significant ripples at home. I'd never worked for a Filipino company before, so I went to learn from two.
The first was a family-controlled, publicly listed group working in renewable energy, food, banking, and infrastructure. There I learned how deeply a well-governed family company is woven into a nation's economy — and what's at stake when it isn't.
The second was five years protecting the maritime industry. Most of the world's merchant seafarers are Filipino. Six to nine months at sea, nothing but ocean, so their families can have more. I hadn't known how much the world's goods rest on their shoulders, or how rarely anyone says so. I do now.
4 · Ceiling, or be a ceiling
In your career, you will either hit a ceiling or be a ceiling.
After five years of building a team's confidence, agency, and structure, I could feel it: for them to shine, I had to step aside. My swan song was promoting two of the ablest, kindest people I know to manager. Then I stepped aside, so the room could be theirs.
5 · 6/6/24
I reached out to my dear friend Atty. Regina Jacinto-Barrientos, CEO and who was a founding partner of the law firm, PJS Law, at twenty-six and is the “J” in the firm’s name, and offered to write a series about a remarkable achievement she'd spearheaded. For free, as a friend and fan. The conversation ended with her and the board asking whether I'd lead their consulting firm.
I'd never been a CEO. I'd always been the strategy person. I’d have happily started as chief strategy officer. The board wanted a CEO. So on 6/6/24, I became the CEO of ExcellerCSI.
We make compliance easy for companies living and working in the Philippines. I'm not a lawyer, and I told my team so on day one: you're the experts; I'm here to make you shine. What I brought was the client's side of the table. We're not here to defend the beuaracrtic processes. We're here to protect and advance the client's goal. So when the permit stalls and the investors expect ground broken by June, the conversation isn’t why it’s not possible.. It's where's the yes?
The first thing I changed was a windowless room. We painted the Manila skyline on the wall, the walls in our yellow gold, and hung a neon sign: Good Vibes. We called it the Hive. Our work is hard; we're caught between demanding clients and slow bureaucracy. But in the Hive, it's good vibes only.
We've since outgrown it. Our new office has real windows, and a real skyline in them. We painted the city on the wall until we could see it out the window. The neon sign came with us, of course.
Since then, we've nearly doubled every two years.
The windowless office then…
6 · Work is love made visible
I've cracked the code of what makes me a good CEO. It's the poetry.
Every company runs on the hearts of the people inside it. My team doesn't dream of closing a deal for the deal's sake. They dream of what closing the deal makes possible for the people they love. So I tell them: your dreams are the fuel of this company, and our dreams are big enough to hold all of yours. One day, I hope, every one of them will have a home of their own.
I've also learned that you can't simply expect agency from people who were raised to be shy about ambition. You have to create the conditions to meet it, and the structure to grow in it. That's what High Fidelity Strategy is built on, and what I watch happen every week: messengers who now write directly to clients, introverted people who now lead them.
I'm not writing as many poems these days. But I see living verses every day.
There's a line from Kahlil Gibran in every offer letter we send. My team translated it into Filipino, and we read it aloud at every planning session:
Work is love made visible. Ang trabaho ay pagmamahal na nakikita ng mga mata. Work is love that the eyes can see.
Closing
In conversation with James Navé Twice 5 Miles Radio · On jet lag and avatars, coming home, the Hive, and why the poetry is the leadership.
WIndows and the city skyline now.
The rest of the story is still being written. A collection of poems, in preparation with 3: A Taos Press. A weekly inbox of the questions leaders can't ask in the room. And a framework for the leader you're becoming.
A poetry salon off Boulevard Saint-Michel, Paris. Looking up.
The ExcellerCSI team at Trấn Quốc pagoda during our 2026 company wide retreat, at a temple in Hanoi VN
Reading poems at the Lake Eden Reunion, October 2026
La clave siempre estuvo aquí.
The key was always here.