As a Business Intermediary, I facilitated the sale or purchase of small businesses. Clients were home health agencies, auto repair shops, a beauty parlor, an exercise studio, restaurants, naming a few. Structured loan packages for start-ups. Pre-qualified US-SBA small business loans, even hard money lending.
Honed my small business development skills when I was Executive Director of a State/Chicago & SBA funded Small Business Development Center, I organized seminars, workshops, and fund-raising events. In an earlier career, I was a buyer for a TV/Radio post-production house in Chicago; developed a buying program for the company’s Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles facilities, assuring protection from price fluctuations. Alongside that was the setting up of a JIT (Just-In-Time) inventory system that minimized warehousing and stock overloads or the lack of it.
Born and raised in the Philippines, my first job was with an advertising agency where I got exposed to the different facets of consumer behavior. I learned how to execute the use of creative and marketing tools to launch an effective advertising and sales campaign. My advertising career segued to home appliance sales management where I oversaw operations of twenty-four company owned and dealer operated retail stores. For what I attribute to networking, a senior management official for a brand that the stores carried invited me to come on board as head of Advertising & Sales Promotions for White-Westinghouse, the market leader in white lines. It was high pressure but was a good learning experience that had a few perks. Then the opportunity to immigrate to the US came at the height of People’s Power that deposed Ferdinand Marcos. I burned some bridges when I left for the US. C’iest la vie
I’ve been a member of PACCGC since the late nineties, held various committees even the Chairmanship. I published a newsletter “Negosyante” (but I excel more as a background influencer). I sat on the board of Rizal Center, and as President of a small asset Filipino Credit Union- we kept it afloat for five years before merging with a larger credit union here in Illinois. I’m active with the Federation of Philippine American Chambers of Commerce (together with six other PACCGC directors as senior FPACC directors).
A project we facilitated with the Philippine Consulate of Chicago was the Memorandum of Understanding between FPACC and the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.