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By Camille Bersola
, MTSJ student
It is no longer unusual for women
to rule over an organization. But what was it like for a woman who
rose to power in an institution dominated by men who were 10 or 20
years her senior, and most of them veterans in the industry?
This was the awkward experience
of Rizabel Cloma-Santos when she took over her father’s seat in
2003 as president of the Philippine Maritime Institution (PMI
Colleges).
She had no idea how to manage the
school that her grandfather, Admiral Tomas Cloma, built in 1948. The
school was just a playground to her when she was a kid.
“My father told me it’s
time that I worked for the family business,” Cloma-Santos reveals.
She was not given any choice, and
the move did not come easy as she was then associate director for
Corporate Affairs of St. Luke’s Medical Center, a position she
enjoyed until duty to family called.
Cloma-Santos had to undergo major
adjustments when she moved to PMI as chief officer. For instance,
she didn’t know how to return the gesture when students saluted
her when they see her in campus. “As president, I didn’t know
what the proper gesture was,” she says, amused at the recall.
She is proud to carry the name of
the Father of Maritime Education of the Philippines, even prouder to
continue its heritage. But under her leadership, the school is
feeling some changes. She maintains a healthy student-administration
relationship. Mistaking her courteous personality for a sign of
softness toward the students, her older colleagues, many of whom are
friends or relatives of Cloma-Santos’s grandfather, have advised
her to appear stiff and more authoritative.
Cloma-Santos relates that she
tries to reach out to the students and directly communicate with
them, a selfless attitude that has always been in her.
With the difficulty of the
economic situation in the country, she points out that many students
who come from the provinces had to sell their properties in the
province to afford an education in Manila. It touches her sympathy
when students come to her with not enough money to pay for their
tuition fee.
“I can imagine how my cousin,
who’s also the treasurer of the school, wants to hit me on my
head,” says Santos good-humoredly.
Cloma-Santos belongs to the third
generation running the family enterprise. In 2004 the school’s DNV
(Det Norske Veritas) contract expired. This accreditation set the
system in place with PMI because it provided them with a quality
system. She proposed the idea of an ISO (International Organization
for Standardization) certification for the school. ISO certification
is advantageous for the school to be able to go with the modern
trend in education with a quality system of management. She heard
more doubts rather than encouragement from colleagues when she came
up with the idea since they lacked resources and the latest
equipment in PMI. “It can be done” was her last word to her
colleagues.
The school received the ISO
certification in 2005.
A Food Technology graduate from
the University of the Philippines, who could have imagined the turn
of things in Rizabel Cloma Santos’ career? She started as a voice
over announcer of Channel 7 in 1983, turning to journalism in 1984
when she joined the newsroom of the government-owned PTV 4. She got
her biggest break during the EDSA Revolution in 1986 when she was
offered a job as correspondent for the American Broadcasting
Channel’s Manila bureau.
Cloma-Santos relates she grabbed
the opportunity to work for an American network and was the only one
willing to do the night shift then.
“Manila then was a
favorite story in the world, even the president taking a shower
became very interesting,” she recalls.
She held on for 15 years until
there were no longer interesting stories for her to write during the
last years of her stay. She quit ABC in 1998. She then started to
work for St. Luke’s Medical Center as a public relations officer.
She took a course in crisis management in the United States to
better equip her for the job. When the hospital created the
Corporate Affairs division, she was designated its corporate
director.
In a different field, Rizabel
Cloma-Santos has taken on the challenge to push PMI Colleges further
as the Philippines’ top maritime school, and only four years on
the job, she has surpassed the expectations of older colleagues.
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