Arthur Fuentes

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Salve Ibanez

Salve Ibaňez

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<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1755161655678manny pangilinan.jpg" style="width:550px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/></div>Ten years ago, in a huge corner office overlooking Manila&#x27;s concrete sprawl, 69-year-old Manuel “MVP” Pangilinan delivered advice that would reshape a young executive’s understanding of development and patriotism.Earl Martin Valencia, then a rising star in the MVP Group’s non-profit corporate incubator IdeaSpace, had just asked his chairman whether he should leave the Philippines to pursue broader horizons. The response wasn’t what he expected.“The Philippines needs you to leave because I can’t teach you what you could learn overseas in the next ten years. When you are ready (to come back), the Philippines will still be here,” MVP told his protégé with characteristic directness. “The culture will be the same, the businesses more or less will be the same.”It was vintage MVP—pragmatic, counterintuitive, and brutally honest. More importantly, it revealed the mind of a billionaire who understood that true nation-building sometimes requires temporary sacrifice.Flash forward to today, at 79, the managing director of First Pacific and chairman of PLDT, MPIC, and Meralco has publicly acknowledged succession challenges. Meanwhile, Valencia—who heeded that decade-old advice and spent years in Silicon Valley’s innovation ecosystem—now serves as an executive member of the National Innovation Council, helping spearhead the Philippines’ Innovation Awards program under President Marcos Jr.Introspective, Earl sits back in his corner in a small cafe in Seattle’s South Center where we met up this week, his 13-year-old young innovator son Maxwell playing with his phone with one ear on the conversation. “I remember that MVP has always asked: how do you get someone who loves the Philippines enough to take on all these hard problems?”And I immediately chime in: “And not run for public office?” Earl smiles.Valencia’s own journey illustrates MVP’s approach to developing talent. After leaving Smart Communications in 2015, he co-founded IdeaSpace and QBO (the Philippines’ answer to Silicon Valley), helped scale fintech startup Plentina, and now works on AI strategy at Microsoft. His path — long and winding from Bridgewater to Dell to being a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum to Charles Schwab and Microsoft — exemplifies what MVP understood: sometimes the best way to serve your country is to leave it, learn elsewhere, then return with global-caliber expertise.MVP’s empire faces this same challenge. Finding leaders who can match his drive remains elusive. The question haunts Manila’s boardrooms: who will be the next MVP?Valencia suggests the answer may lie in government and business developing next-generation leaders simultaneously. “Someone who will be the next MVP, RSA—that’s true in public office too. People need alternatives.”As chairman of this November’s Innovation Awards ceremony at Malacañang, Valencia embodies MVP’s vision of Filipinos learning globally then returning to elevate local standards. The awards committee has received submissions of breakthrough solutions from pili resin sealants to agricultural innovations—exactly the kind of grassroots problem-solving MVP has championed.But perhaps the most intriguing development in Valencia’s portfolio has nothing to do with technology. His family’s Davao Memorial Park business—started by his grandfather 50 years ago—has become an unexpected case study in hidden gold mines and overlooked markets.The memorial park industry, Valencia discovered, operates with 60 percent margins while Filipinos increasingly treat columbarium niches like real estate investments. Buyers purchase niches for P100,000 and flip them for P150,000 within 2-3 years. “Perfect real estate for people who cannot afford” traditional property, Valencia explains.More fascinating still: the potential to tech-enable this business through digital memory preservation. Imagine clouds storing departed loved ones’ social media footprints, creating digital lockboxes of memories bundled with physical memorial lots. It’s the kind of innovative disruption that could transform an ancient industry—but Valencia remains tight-lipped about the specifics.As MVP’s era winds down and the next generation assumes leadership, his greatest legacy may not be the telecommunications towers or tollways bearing his name. It could be the mindset he instilled.<div> </div><div>Boardroom Tea comes out every Wednesday</div>

Boardroom Tea: MVP and The Mentor's Paradox

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Boardroom Tea: MVP and The Mentor's Paradox

Salve Ibaňez,

ABS-CBN News

Published August 13, 2025 10:00 PM PHT

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Updated August 14, 2025 04:56 PM PHT

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