INTRODUCTORY TO THE GUEST SPEAKER - ACC COLLEGE DEPARTMENT For a little more to seven decades, Aklan Catholic College has been moving people by sharing its vision-mission and goals to realize the many dreams of bright future, create and recreate lives, to connect people to their aspirations and revolutionize the personae into the embodiment of awe-inspiring Christian professionals and remarkable citizens of this province/ and of the country. His Excellency Most Rev. Jose Corazon T. Talooc D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of Kalibo and Chairman of the Board of Directors of this Institution, Rev. Father Jose Gualberto I. Villasis, Rector-President, Rev. Fr. Paul Andrew Buenaventura S. Sayon, V, Vice President for Finance, the Rev. Fathers and Sisters of ACC, Deans and members of the Academic Council and members of the Adminstration, faculty and Chairs of the different programs and disciplines, the staff of this College, parents, graduates, guests, students, friends and all the ACCians, good afternoon. Allow me to tell a story of an ACC alumna who exemplifies Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideal that “Success often comes to those who dare to act and seldom goes to the timid who are ever afraid of the consequences.” And to our distinguished speaker, allow me to introduce you in the most familiar way that I can, so that such familiarity of the story of your character and competence will surely awe-inspire the many. Ladies and gentlemen: I met her when I was asked with Ma’am Carol by the cordial Rector-President to come and join him in an invitation to have a fiesta lunch in our guest speaker’s ancestral home in Marianos-Numancia. Having been told that the lady host was a titlist in many beauty pageants which highlighted the Mutya it Aklan in 1988, I immediately discerned that her true beauty was beyond her flawless skin and facial charm when she smiled with gracious warmth and welcomed us in. We were provided with plates and utensils to enjoy the buffet table for all invited guests. I took part in some of the salads, cheeses and sweet fares since I felt already full before I came in. As I was groping for ideas to float, our guest speaker expressed herself in a free spirit of simplicity and humility but with candidness. I never felt awkward towards my point of joining the Rector-President in taking such opportunity of inviting her to be our speaker, since she was the one who had rather asked me why she had to be the guest. We were brought back to a radio interview, where she was the guest interviewee, wherein revealed her multifarious travel engagements because of her competence and scores of her experiences in a field which she described to be far from what she got in her bachelor’s degree and was able to fall in love with. She started her career with the Solidbank Corporation as Trading Clerk after she graduated her Bachelor of Science in Commerce cum Laude in this Institution in 1991. Her promotions escalated yearly in that corporation until she became the Project Officer/2nd Level Bank Officer for two years until 1996. She joined ChinaTrust Commercial Bank after Solidbank as Asst. Manager and was eventually hailed to become the Manager for almost a year but left in 1999. Delving herself into business consultancy, she was part of the PKTech Philippines, a system distributor in Asia Pacific Region, as Treasury Business and Project Consultant and Business Consultant for Foreign Exchange, Money Market and Securities for three years until 2002. Her stints with PKTech opened her several consultancy-based opportunities bringing her to be working with Temenos Philippines, a banking software company, for three years in 2002 to 2005. She then moved to Temenos Singapore for another two years. Her prowess in consultancy made her to conquer Rabobank Australia where she was asked to stay for five years as the Senior Business Consultant and Lead Functional Architect in the design of the system solution for corporate and retail projects of Australia and New Zealand. Her vast experiences made her a frequent flyer and cosmopolite to Vietnam, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and many other countries of the Asia Pacific Region, with which she met international people and garnered intercultural learning but remained in love with the Filipino culture and Catholic values. Despite these enormous travels and experiences, she consistently exudes to be a loving wife to Mr. Emmanuel Lorenzo Santos Raval from GenSan and a conscientiously compassionate mother two children, one is a 16-year old and the other eleven. Asked why does she have to travel frequently back to the Philippines when she could easily bring her family abroad and opt to change citizenship, she said “raising kids in the Philippines is incomparable and bringing the kids to a Catholic education is far different.” I inquired why she had that idea. She said, “I was once a state university student, but I opted to come back home and join Aklan College (now Aklan Catholic College) where I value a culture that brought me closer to and preserved my relationship with my mother and family and especially with God.” She added, “To work with Rabobank in Australia for two years was a blessing. To be asked to stay with Rabobank for another three years is God’s overwhelming generosity, but I cannot barter Philippines and my family to any of what the world can offer.” A sidelight of her experience with this institution was disclosed when she talked about how she firmly decided to seek guidance from the Commission on Higher Education for her to be able to graduate in a time she was expected to finish. Her being the eldest in the family gave her strength to face the many challenges in life and helped her make enormous decisions her family’s sake. That afternoon of my encounter with this woman of substance seemed eternal. I left with Fr. Joebert and Ma’am Carol, with an exuberant feeling of inspiration and a thought of how this afternoon would be filled with her awesome success story and her amazing character. A woman of substance, true beauty, experience-loaded, well-traveled, well-mannered, gracious, but humble, simple, nationalistic and God-fearing authentic embodiment of the ACCian character and competence; Ladies and gentlemen: The woman of the hour, the guest speaker and inspiration for this afternoon, MRS. ASSISSI MORALES CAYNAP-RAVAL.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 05:42:13 +0000