THE SMART SUPER WOMEN
If the future truly is female, it probably looks a little bit like Mylene Abiva.
As the President and CEO of FELTA Multi-Media, Inc. (a manufacturer and distributor of innovative educational materials for the school market including LEGO Education and LEGO Early Learning in the country), Ms. Mylene pioneered introducing Robotics in the Philippines’ Basic Education.
As early as 2000, she’s been training teachers to integrate Robotics into subjects like Computer Literacy, General Science, Mathematics, and Physics. Her company also spearheaded the Philippine Robotics Olympiad back in 1999. It’s an annual science and technology event highlighting the participating students’ skills in basic engineering and computer programming through robotics.
The year 2012 saw the Philippines dispatch an all-girls team to compete in that year’s World Robot Olympiad and their success at garnering a gold medal was a turning point for Ms. Mylene. Since then, she encouraged more schools to bring girls into their Robotics programs and to the teams representing them at competitions.
As a woman in a male-dominated field, Ms. Mylene has fought hard against discrimination and misogyny, and continues to take up the cudgels to inspire every woman to stand up for their rights and to fight for their dreams.
Rossana is one of the country’s most prolific business leaders. Her experiences as a full scholar and a working student in the University of Los Baños, along with her inborn entrepreneurial streak, led her to establish AHEAD at the ripe old age of 26.
The company was a pioneer in offering college entrance exam reviews for the Philippines’ top universities, such as UP, ADMU, DLSU, and UST. The AHEAD Tutorial and Review Center continues to branch out into other distinct service brands including AHEAD Books & Things, AHEAD Professional Network, AHEAD Junior Tutorial and Singapore Math Enrichment Center, and AHEAD Online.
Apart from running a thriving business over the past two and a half decades, Ms. Rossana also regularly features as a resource speaker on various topics concerning business and education both locally and internationally. Her numerous awards for entrepreneurship, marketing, and educational leadership are testament to her lifelong love and commitment to learning as well.
These days, she continues to share her hard-won and hard-earned insights freely, mostly through the official channels of AHEAD and its other brands.
Ms. Jean Uvero’s life is a blueprint for making bestselling lemonade out of lemons that life throws at you.
For starters, she was only 17 when her father died, forcing her to step up and provide for her family. Despite this, she went on to become a Mason’s scholar, graduating with a nursing degree and becoming a registered nurse later on.
After five years of working as a Head Nurse at the Millard Filmore Hospital in the US, she came back home to settle down and established a trucking company called Uvero Movers, Inc. to cater to her husband’s brokerage company. While the business flourished, she was forced to sell it a mere two years later when her daughter was diagnosed with Global Hyperkinesia.
Ms. Jean then spent three years as a stay-at-home mom, but her entrepreneurial spirit never left her. She eventually joined bazaars to buy and sell items, gradually turning Php7,000 seed money into Php50,000. This emboldened her to transform their garage into a retail store and even to use a portion of their house loan to start a franchise business.
Her gamble paid off. Today, her Grupo Uvero has 17 Nail It! Salon branches, 2 restaurants, an auto shop and a car care center.