For most people around the world, 2020 is a year of stagnancy. Workers have lost their jobs, students have stopped going to school, and businesses have closed down. But for Ms. Rossana Llenado, founder and president of AHEAD – the leading and most awarded tutorial and review center in the Philippines, this year holds a lot of learning opportunities especially for Smart Super Women.

During her Facebook live seminar on June 18 – which garnered more than 51,000 views, 2600 comments, and 679 shares from different parts of the world – Ms. Llenado shared her views about different topics including life goals, marriage, family matters, education, mentorship, business, among others. She started her talk by introducing the 8 A’s of what a Smart Super Woman of today should be – alert, agile, adaptable, action-oriented, adept, agreeable, altruistic, and ahead-thinking. These characteristics are crucial in our wholistic growth as women especially if we want to become better individuals.

As a leader and visionary, Ms. Llenado highlights the importance of planning life goals in our success. According to her, the short-term goal at this time is survival. We have to make sure that we come out healthy and alive from this global pandemic. After that, we have to start thinking about our medium-term goals – whether that’s changing careers or improving our life in general. Lastly, we have to identify and move towards our end goal because everything we do should be of service to what we want to achieve in the end.

To become a Smart Super Woman, it is necessary for women to invest in themselves. This means exercising daily, making sure that we learn something new every day, finding a mentor, maintaining social connections, disconnecting from negative people, and always keeping the faith. Doing these things will mold and transform women into better versions of themselves especially at this time.

Being a woman is not an easy task because of the multitasking involved in our daily lives. A housewife is already a super woman given all the chores that she needs to finish every single day and a working mother is another kind of hero that we should all look up to. It is not an easy feat to do everything that’s why Ms. Llenado stressed that women should be kinder to themselves. Nobody is perfect and women especially, should never beat themselves for failing short of their expectations. Committing mistakes is normal and it doesn’t and will never make us less of a woman.

At the end of her talk, Ms Llenado emphasized that educators and parents should continue investing in their children’s education. South Korea and Singapore, two of the world’s most progressive economies managed to put their names on top because of their commitment to education. The current situation is not an excuse for students and for everyone to stop learning. For teachers and parents, this new normal is a challenge and also an opportunity to explore online learning channels such as AHEAD Alpha that offers online K-12, homeschool support, and assistance to schools that are transitioning to online.

It is true that the pandemic has changed our way of living. However, there are still many things we can do to transform the new normal into a “better normal.” It is not the time to be selfish with what we know. Rather, it’s high time for us to share our knowledge and be altruistic in our actions. For Ms Llenado, an altruistic act means doing more than what is expected from us. Now that schools have closed down, we can help parents and teachers by continuing to support students through different means of learning. As women, we can help other women grow and improve to become a Super Smart Woman for the better normal. Eventually, whatever good that we give out to the world comes back to us in tenfold.