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By Katrina Mennen A. Valdez
For someone who’s been there,
having the resources, solid educational foundation and exceptional
abilities does not guarantee success. Hunger, in his view, is the
more effective stimulus.
It’s hard to believe one is
hearing this from Francis Estrada, an alumnus and new president of
Asian Institute of Management (AIM). But that’s exactly what he is
saying. Hunger, he repeats, is what it takes to make career much
more meaningful.
For Estrada, hunger is not the
biological feeling that human beings experience every day, but a
source of power that underpins all the actions that may lead to
one’s success.
He elaborates: “It is easy to
find qualified people to enroll at AIM, especially if they have the
resources and solid educational foundation to back them up. However,
to remain competitive and innovating, people must constantly feel
the hunger to accomplish something.”
A known student activist in his
time, Estrada has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business
Administration. He also graduated with honors from the Liberal Arts
department of De La Salle University, where he majored in literature
with minor in Economics.
His involvement in the First
Quarter Storm, however, poised a problem to finding a job in 1971.
“Companies that time did not want to hire activists,” he
relates.
Qualified but jobless, Estrada
experienced the “hunger” whereof he speaks. Left with little
choice but to go back to school, he borrowed money from the SSS to
finance his Masters in Business Management (now MBA) at AIM. His
brother, who was then AIM’s dean of external affairs, provided the
balance for his educational funds.
“The majority of my classmates
had work experience; I did not. We had a spectrum of ideological
beliefs in my class . . . We had a great deal of diversity in terms
of nationalities as well as professional backgrounds,” he recalls.
He was, still is, convinced that
management is important “if we want a just society” as it
provides one the opportunity to become “independent of whatever
social and economic system may prevail.”
He graduated from AIM with
distinction. In 1998, Estrada co-founded and headed Equity Mergers
Asia, Inc. a Philippine-based investment and corporate finance firm.
Previously, he co-founded and chaired the international investment
firm William E. Simon and Sons Asia.
Estrada, the first alumnus of AIM
to become its president, says the most challenging responsibility
that he faces is to make Asian culture more attune to technology.
It is also his vision for AIM. He
explains: “Though we are in the period of technology, Asia has
always been distinctive because of its diverse cultural feeling, the
sense of community and family, the biggest thrust that I would want
to make is to merge the extremes and convert it into a more powerful
tool, without losing our soul.”
AIM is a graduate school of
business and a center of business and management research. It is one
of the very few schools in Asia to be internationally accredited
with both AACSB and EQUIS accreditations. It is sometimes referred
to as the Harvard of the East because it was established in
partnership with Harvard Business School and uses its teaching
methodologies.
It was named by Asiaweek magazine
(a TIME publication) as the best in the Asia-Pacific region, and has
been hailed one of the top three in Asia in the field of business
education by various publications.
When asked about what made him
accept the responsibility of being the chief of one of the leading
business schools in Asia, Estrada replies simply: “It’s really
because of two things. One, I am romantic, I would want to share my
experience and knowledge to our students. Second, I still feel the
burning hunger that I might be capable to make a difference to the
institution and influence our students to be a better breed of
leaders and managers to Asia without having to take away their
souls.”
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