Womens Era Archives

Joanne de Guzman Rico: A Marketing Trailblazer to look out for in 2023 Despite many challenges, this marketer built and turned-around brands from zero to hero

Meet Joanne de Guzman Rico, the Head of Marketing at Salma Rehabilitation Hospital, which is part of SEHA – the largest network of government medical facilities in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

A Story of an Empowered Woman

Joanne de Guzman Rico is a story of an empowered woman who is rising above adversity. From humble beginnings in Manila, she has gone a long way from her first job to now a truly inspiring global professional.

A consistent A-student, Joanne believes that having a strong academic foundation will serve as a springboard to success. Armed with resilience, grit, and ambition, she did not let poverty define her future so she studied very hard to earn scholarships. Her mother’s and family’s sacrifices became her inspiration and her drive to achieve more. She dedicated all her time and effort to complete each school year with academic and special awards so she could maintain her scholarship and help finance her education. In 1999, she graduated Valedictorian with 7 other academic, extracurricular, and special awards. She then took Bachelor of Arts, Major in Philosophy at the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy in the University of the Philippines – Diliman, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Right after graduation, she joined Globe Telecom where she started her career as a Sales Administrative Associate, then later as a Customer Service Associate. While working at Globe, she received awards and special recognition from the company. In 2005, she joined Ministop Philippines as a Franchise Marketing Officer – her first break in Marketing. Despite not having a formal education in the field of Marketing, she won the Rookie of the Year Award on her 6th month in Ministop. On her 7th month, and only at age 23 then, she was handpicked by top management and was promoted to Advertising and Promotions Manager, where she headed a 7-person team and managed the main brand with a chain of over 250 stores. Joanne was mentored by one of the Philippine’s business tycoons, and was trained at Ministop’s Head Quarters in Tokyo, Japan so she could learn, replicate, and implement the core brand strategy in the local business arena.

In 2009, Al-Ahli Hospital – the largest private premium hospital in Doha, Qatar, took Joanne and later appointed her as the organization’s Marketing Executive. She was the first Filipino woman to officially breakthrough the space of healthcare marketing in Qatar.

In 2012, Burjeel Hospital in Abu Dhabi, UAE took Joanne as part of its pioneer team, where her main task was to introduce the brand in the emirate and grow its market share in the capital, within the country, and within the region. In the inception and growth stages of Burjeel, Joanne single-handedly managed all marketing campaigns of the brand across all platforms. She was awarded Burjeel Star Employee in 2013 and was recognized as Burjeel Star during Burjeel’s 2nd Annual Day in 2014. In 2015, Joanne was promoted to Senior Marketing Executive and a year later, she became the Assistant Marketing Manager of the brand, where she managed the PR communications and corporate events verticals of the brand.

In April 2018, Joanne joined NMC Healthcare – the largest private healthcare company in the UAE. NMC acquired Bareen International Hospital, which has been on negative profitability for 3 years since it started its operations. In less than a year after Joanne joined the company as the Marketing and Sales Manager, Bareen started growing patient volume and began gaining profits. As a result, the hospital expanded by adding more clinics, doctors, and beds to capture the continuous rise of patient footfall in its outpatient and inpatient departments. Joanne became the first Filipino woman in the leadership team of Bareen and played a significant role in the milestone that became a feather on the hat of both Bareen and NMC. Due to this breakthrough, NMC stepped up business expansion plans, acquired more medical centers in Abu Dhabi and winged each of them under Bareen Management team – which is now grouped as a cluster. In less than two years, Bareen Cluster has grown from managing one to eight medical facilities. In the same speed, Joanne was promoted to Head of Marketing and Sales of the cluster. She spearheaded functions related to Marketing and Business Development – from brand positioning to increasing brand awareness and growing brand loyalty to the facility, from increasing footfall to generating revenue and raising profitability for each medical facility.

In August 2022, Salma Rehabilitation Hospital under SEHA, took Joanne and posted her as Head of Marketing.

An Advocate of Children’s Right to Education

Joanne’s greatest dream is to serve, give back, and be an instrument of change in the community. Having experienced it herself, she has a strong personal advocacy on the right of children to access education, especially the underprivileged segment. She has been a resilient sponsor of World Vision Philippines for 17 years and has been supporting many children together with their families and their communities in depressed areas of her home country. While working at Ministop Philippines, she launched the World Vision Coin Bank campaign across all Ministop stores. She opened doors to introduce World Vision’s Child Sponsorship Program to JG Summit employees and Ministop franchisees. Her commitment towards the cause prompted her to be one of the pro bono organizers of the event and to host the program. Currently, Joanne is one of the ambassadors and spokespersons of World Vision Philippines overseas.

In order to inspire other Filipino women to rise to the challenge no matter the circumstance and break glass ceilings, Joanne wrote a book chapter about her journey which was published in Disrupt 4.0 Filipina Women: BEING – The Fourth Book on Leadership by the Foundation for Filipina Women’s Network. The book was launched at the Gremio Literario in Lisbon, Portugal in November 2022.

Awards and Accolades

During her 18-year career, Joanne has received numerous awards and recognitions for her accomplishments. In 2017, she was recognized and awarded as the Marketing and Advertising Professional of the Year by The Filipino Times, a glitterati red-carpet event held in honor of exemplary Filipinos overseas. In 2018, Joanne was one of the nominees for the Search for Huwarang OFW, organized by 700 Club Asia through one of the biggest TV networks in the Philippines: GMA 7. In 2020, she was named as one of the Thought Leaders in Illustrado’s 300 Most Influential Filipinos in the Gulf, Legacy Edition. In 2021, Joanne was recognized as one of the Most Influential Filipina Women in the WorldTM by a US-based non-profit organization, Foundation for Filipina Women’s Network. She was the only awardee from the Middle East during that year. In 2022, she received an award for Outstanding Leadership during the Health 2.0 Conference in Dubai, UAE.

Joanne’s journey in large, multicultural organizations was and is not a walk in the park. The struggles are real and are most of the time, daunting. Breaking stereotypes of nationality and gender roles in the workplace is still an existing unspoken issue. Bringing with her core values such as faith, hard work, dedication, passion, and resilience, Joanne rose to the challenge, and trail-blazed with pride and confidence in the international arena.

Karen V. Ordones: Leading the change in the Tutoring industry

Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Karen V. Ordones is the CEO and Founder of Tutor.id, which is constantly looking for ways of transforming the education industry, growing tutoring businesses, and enabling novel ways of income for both tutors and their students.

Tutor.id was born as a management tool for tutors because Karen noticed most management software in education was targeted at schools, and the system was too complex and costly for a one-person business. As a full-time private teacher, Karen needed a simpler, more affordable tool to manage her own tutoring business with 100 students. She had more students than she could have comfortably managed with excel sheets, so she decided to create a product for herself and her peers who were experiencing the same problems as her.

Tutor.id’s first version was released in late September 2016. Karen thought it was a big risk for the edtech company as it had no competitors at that point of time, and the team was afraid that they might have launched this innovation too soon. It is always risky when an organization spots a market need even before consumers know it. In cases like these, companies need to educate the customers, which can be very expensive and time-consuming.

After creating an easy-to-use management solution for the tutors to manage their business and students, Karen, together with her co-founder Murillo Ichikawa, decided to add the marketplace to Tutor.id’s product in early 2019, creating a holistic solution never seen before in the tutoring industry. Tutor. matched tutors and students while supporting both throughout the entire learning journey, which paid off massively and led to 900% higher retention than its closest rivals.

Thanks to its history of starting as a management tool for tutors, the edtech platform had built the first marketplace keeping teachers in mind. Tutor.id’s full suite management software (payments, scheduling, lesson tracing tools) helps individual tutors launch and grow their business hassle-free and adds a lot of value to its marketplace.

Presently the edtech firm works with two business models:

20% revenue share from marketplace transactions
Subscription(10-40$/monthly) for management tool for tutors

Currently, the organization comprises more than 7.8k tutors registered from 119 countries.

The Leader

A Brazilian of Italian descent, Karen V. Ordones has always been very interested in understanding human behavior, which led her to study Social Sciences with a concentration in Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. This also motivated her to experience several different cultures and societies.

Additionally, Karen holds a Master’s Degree in Baltic Sea Region Studies from the University of Tartu, Estonia.

Karen’s journey as an educator began with her family, which has been involved in education for at least three generations. Her grandfather and his brothers founded a very popular music school in São Paulo and actively organized Modern Art Week, a revolutionary event that changed Brazilian art forever.

Karen says, “I don’t have a specific event that activated my “Education genes,” because since I was a school kid, I enjoyed teaching my peers. As an adult and having taught both in schools and privately, my positive and negative experiences led me to create Tutor.id.”

Motivation to Establish the Business

Initially, as a tutor, Karen faced several challenges managing students with excel sheets. Her primary motivation was to solve her own pain as a solo tutoring business owner.

She was way too overwhelmed to manage a whole business on her own. She always wanted a professional tool that could automate extremely time-consuming tasks. She wanted to focus on preparing great lessons and supporting her students.

With time and growing demand, Tutor.id’s product evolved into a marketplace on steroids and extended its mission to helping students to keep track of their learning and be more motivated to learn. “It is extremely challenging to bring individual learning assessments to scalable tech, and we are excited to take up this task to figure this out!”– she explains.

“It is time to bring more innovation to Education. We have been digitizing reality, but it is about time to create novel ways for the new generation to learn faster and better to build a better world.”

Karen also wants to empower people to become the best version of themselves. Tutor.id’s primary mission is to make the learning process much easier, faster, effective, and exciting. The edtech firm aspires to help students enjoy the learning process and achieve their academic and professional goals with its qualified tutors. The firm has also built several tools to help students track their progress, gain confidence and motivation to keep learning new things, and succeed in whatever they set their minds to. Karen is aware of the fact that she and her team play a crucial role in helping people learn more about how they can effectively learn at a faster rate and how to retain that knowledge long term. Although challenging, Karen still finds it very rewarding to see people being directly impacted by her products.

Additionally, as a startup, Tutor.id works closely with the community of users. Karen says, “If we change one person’s life with our product, we already feel a huge sense of accomplishment and aim to scale from there. We aim to build something users love and cannot live without.”

With its growth, Tutor.id plans to work with organizations that will enable the company’s impact on different parts of our beloved planet. With Tutor.id, these organizations will have access to remote communities that could benefit from the quality and remote education.

Tackling the Pandemic

Karen states, “My favorite and the most exciting market trend is the Metaverse and any sort of augmented reality technology. Wouldn’t it be amazing to learn biology while walking in the Amazon rainforest with your teacher and classmate?”

Since the first quarter of 2020, the world has witnessed a deadly pandemic, leading to many deaths, lockdowns, work-from-home orders, and closed schools. This pandemic, however, brought an increase in Tutor.id’s access by 4000%, which eventually triggered a series of instability in the product. This situation allowed the CTO Murillo Ichikawa and his team to quickly identify technical weaknesses and rebuild the platform for faster growth. Thanks to its brilliant results and positive impact during such emotionally draining times, Tutor.id closed its biggest funding of 500K EUR from angel investors of Estonia, Denmark, Canada, and the United States.

Preparing for the Future As the organization’s CEO, Karen would love to see Tutor.id as a brand that people recognize and know that its values are deeply rooted in empowering education for both tutors and students. She states, “Our plan to get there is really focusing on providing value. We aim to ensure learning is measured, so students and tutors can track their progress. This is something that has not been achieved by any company yet, so we would like to be the pioneers in adding this value to the industry and create the gold standard of learning assessment.”

Ivette Torres Carías: Creating Exceptional Brand Loyalty

Meet Ivette Torres Carías, the Regional Business Development Manager at Webhelp Onelink, a premier partner in outsourced omnichannel customer experience services. Webhelp’s primary purpose is to revolutionize the BPO industry through innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and happiness culture, generating value for its associates, clients, and the community.

Founded in Paris, Webhelp is now located throughout Latin America, supporting some of the biggest brands spread across the U.S, Latin America, and Europe. Webhelp’s values of happiness, leadership, engagement, innovation, excellence, and solidarity are the basis of which its employees approach their work and life.

Alongside its Game-Changing Culture, Webhelp brings a complete portfolio of services, focusing on BPO, automation, thriving for conversations, and development of self-service to reduce digital effort and drive customer autonomy, positioning self-service, chatbots, and voice bots. It also connects channels and systems for seamless, digital customer journeys anywhere, anytime. The firm utilizes omnichannel, messaging, video chat, and platform integration. Webhelp focuses on bot interactions and customer experience efficiency to help with quicker and more personalized experiences, introducing machine translation, voice transformation, RPAs, and email automation. Most importantly, Webhelp’s team learns from its customers’ voices to improve quality and provide actionable insights using best-in-class monitoring, voice recording, transcription, speech, and analytics.

A Dedicated Leader

As a Business Engineer with a master’s degree in Business Management, Ivette loves to learn, which has been a crucial part of her personal and professional life. Presently she is pursuing a degree in Theology and learning Portuguese as her third language. During the third year of her associate’s degree, she liked the dynamic daily life of a project manager and decided to dedicate her life to project management.

“I have built my career in the business development field designing solutions and supporting the commercial process inside Webhelp, this year is my fifth anniversary, and I am happy with the path that I had the privilege to walk; I started as a project manager in 2017 and based on the different opportunities and the support of my leaders and mentors I am now part of the leadership in our PMO.”– Says Ivette.

Aside from her professional career, Ivette loves serving in several volunteering programs. Initially, she started volunteering in High School as a math teacher. Later she got an opportunity to work for a program in her local community where she could work with specially-abled people. Before that, Ivette hadn’t had the necessary opportunity to interact with the community, which opened a new world for her. She discovered several different techniques to teach and learn.

“In life, there are good days and challenges; I invite you to create opportunities for the people around you and find something that fills your purpose in life. I always say that you can find a purpose by identifying one problem that annoys you the most and work each day until it is less of a problem and more of a solution.”

Ivette now teaches them not only how to read and write but also math and other subjects, which can help them get a high-school diploma. Currently, she is also a part of a church program to reduce illiteracy among people with special abilities.

A Team Effort

As a passionate team player, Ivette knows that her greatest accomplishment is a team effort. She says, “I have a team of 8 members that I am beyond proud of; seeing them grow, learn, and lead has been the most rewarding experience in my career so far.”

Webhelp recruits talents at an entry-level level, and Ivette knows how they face their fears and build their voices. Her role is to support them and remind them what they can do. She doesn’t take it as her accomplishment as when she was provided with the challenge of leading a team at a very young age; she also had doubts, fears, and second thoughts about it, but now she has realized that a bit of encouragement has the most significant impact of all and it also helps put people on charge.

When the Pandemic Bought New opportunities

Ivette believes the pandemic bought a lot of opportunities for the BPO industry. The pandemic halted face-to-face interaction to a large extent, which escalated the need for remote assistance worldwide.

“A lot of companies needed a solution to Customer Service, and others had to learn how to sell remotely, and on fortune, we had that portfolio of solutions.”– Ivette states.

During the pandemic, Webhelp changed one of its major clients’ path in digital transformation and moved their interaction to 50% digital. This eventually helped the company achieve brilliant results and reduce overall billing by 15%.

Webhelp is well known for its tailor-made services. Irrespective of the industry, product, or location, Webhelp has a solution to improve its customer’s journey. Now with years of experience, the organization is ready to accommodate its services to a different reality.

The Primary Differentiator

Ivette believes that Webhelp’s primary differentiator is its people. She says, “The culture, mindset, and vision we have as a company impact the services we provide.”

Ivette still remembers her first day when she met someone at C-level who said, “we take care of you to be at 200% of your personal life so you can be 100% inside our company.” At that point, she understood that the company’s culture is entirely focused on its employees as a person, and the contributions they make to the company are secondary.

Eyeing the Future

Webhelp is focusing on transitioning from traditional channels to digital and self-service platforms, including the human touch, as it wants to have a holistic approach. With offices in 8 countries, providing services to different regions, Webhelp will continue to develop other solutions and expand its service portfolios, such as Content Moderation, Data Annotation, and B2B Sales, among others, to provide an end-to-end solution to its clients with a customer-centric focus.

Natalie Tenzer-Silva: Paving the way for Mozambique’s growing tourism industry

Meet Natalie Tenzer-Silva, the powerhouse behind Maputo’s esteemed Dana Tours brand. Over the past two-plus decades, Natalie and her team have played a leading role in revolutionising the Mozambican tourism industry by providing sun-seeking leisure and corporate travellers with custom holiday packages and services. These packages and services are expertly tweaked and tailored to suit each traveller’s individual requirements, requests and budget.

Surviving the pandemic

As is the case for all countries around the globe, Mozambique is currently undergoing a tourism overhaul in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Natalie is determined to embrace and accelerate the necessary changes through Dana Tours. She speaks openly about the massive toll that the pandemic took on her business and the greater tourism industry but explains how she believes positive growth will come from the hardships experienced in the long run.

“Our business came close to collapse but every day through the pandemic I went to the office to prove that I didn’t give up hope. Working with a skeleton staff complement, I wanted to be there each day to support those who came to work,” Natalie says.

“The pandemic showed me how, as a team, we could think outside of the box, and adapt through an almost complete travel blackout period,” she adds.

Going forward, the focus worldwide is very much on re-thinking tourism and Natalie is of the view that travel suppliers should be turning their attention to figuring out how to provide travellers with experiences that locals might take for granted, as well as how to create new adventures within a destination’s unique environment.

Leadership and championing a team

Born in South Africa, Natalie immigrated to Mozambique in the early 1990s. Mingling with the locals, she quickly learned Portuguese and entered the tourism industry in 1994 where she immediately put her natural leadership skills to good use. Natalie managed a large travel agency, called Dana Agency, then founded what was to become Mozambique’s largest inbound tour operator, Dana Tours. She is a member of the Chamber of Commerce Tourism Committee.

Since opening Dana Tours in 2002, Natalie has invested 20 years into its transformation, leading her staff along the way to building experiences around the country’s essence and utilising her team’s unrivalled knowledge regarding its very best bits whether in the city, on safari or at the beach.

For Natalie, leadership is about championing a team as a whole, but also putting energy into developing and supporting each individual member of the team.

“Every single team member has their own personal and professional goals in terms of growth and improvement. I’m very serious about creating an environment where people feel safe to express their ideas, where they feel protected and appreciated. It’s important to provide my employees with a sense of job security and to define parameters within which they can work together as a unit,” she explains.

As far as leadership is concerned, Natalie believes that a good leader has trust in their team. A good leader doesn’t simply dictate. Instead, they listen to their team members, encourage them to give their own outlook on the future of the business and gently guide them in the right direction when necessary.

“Each of my employees learns through experience when dealing with clients. I encourage my staff to give me their outlook on how we should handle certain situations, and most times I don’t need to correct anything!”

The post-pandemic travel landscape in Mozambique

In a post-pandemic landscape, there is only one constant, and this is the case regardless of the destination: travel is going to, and already does, look very different compared to how it looked in 2019. Natalie shares some insights:

“Post-COVID, we’ve seen a dramatic up-take in enquiries and a lot more “last-minute” bookings. After a long time spent confined to their homes and having their movement restricted, people are so eager to take those once-in-a-lifetime trips. While much of the interest is for 2023, we’ve seen a significantly higher number of bookings with a 3-week lead time in 2022.”

Natalie is hopeful that the increased interest in a beach or safari holiday in Mozambique will continue its upward trend, highlighting just how friendly and welcoming Mozambicans are when it comes to their international visitors.

“The locals are warm and welcoming, and proud to show travellers their beautiful culture, safari parks and beaches,” she says.

“There are many reasons travellers should be setting their sights on a trip to Mozambique in the near future, especially if a quiet and secluded escape is on the cards. After all, there are no mass tourism establishments, there’s an endless supply of wide, open spaces and countless once-in-a-lifetime experiences on offer.”

Inspired to embrace change

Inspired by her team and her industry’s resilience, Natalie tells of how she and her staff at Dana Tours are ready to embrace the inevitable changes over the course of the next few years.

“Resilience inspires me. The fact that my staff, many with young families, could tighten their belts and ride this through is incredible. They’re the reason I love my job and my role as a leader. Walking into the office and hearing laughter and music and bumping into colleagues in the corridors puts a smile on my face,” comments Natalie.

When asked what advice she would impart to a new leader, Natalie insists that success in a position of leadership revolves around fully investing in one’s team and its growth.

“Guide your team to work as a unit, invest in them and always strive to be honest and transparent in all dealings. You’re all working towards one goal – mutual trust is key,” she concludes.

The future is bright for tourism in Mozambique and there’s no doubt that Dana Tours will be paving the way for its development, keeping the traveller experience at the forefront of every booking and letting the team’s passion for the country and its marvellous beauty shine through in all of its offerings.

Marwa Kaabour: Redefining Leadership

Meet Marwa Kaabour, the Group Head of Marketing and Corporate Communication of Al Masaood LLC, one of the most prominent family-owned business conglomerates in Abu Dhabi, which formed concurrently with the UAE’s union back in 1971. The group provides comprehensive solutions to its customers across 18 different industry sectors through its diverse activities and divisions. As an organization, Al Masaood has always aimed to serve and support the growth and development of the UAE, specifically in Abu Dhabi.

Being Abu Dhabi’s largest family business, the Al Masaood Group has pioneered the fields of automotive, transport, power, and industrial, constantly growing and developing the country for more than five decades. The group’s flagship company Al Masaood Automobiles is a leader in Abu Dhabi’s automotive market. Its Power Division has long been supporting the power, marine and renewables industry in Abu Dhabi. From the very early days of importing the first gas turbine and constructing the first water desalination plant, the group has always supported Abu Dhabi’s economic development.

The Steadfast Leader

Marwa has been a part of the marketing and communication industry for nearly three decades in the Middle East. She started her career with organizations like Leo Burnett and Impact BBDO. However, she soon decided to switch to the client side and started helping organizations build their marketing and corporate communication functions. During her long and illustrious career, Marwa has helped create and manage strategic marketing communications for several international and regional firms, including government entities of the region. Marwa’s experience includes her work in energy, manufacturing, aviation, automotive, FMCG, food & beverage, construction, and retail industries.

A graduate of the American University of Sharjah’s undergraduate and post-graduate programs, Marwa holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Management and an Executive MBA. She also holds certifications from the Center for Sustainability Excellence CSE in Brussuels as a Certified Sustainability Marketer and the Institute of Digital Marketing in Ireland as a Certified Digital Marketer.

Greatest Achievement

In her current role, Marwa started with communication development from scratch. Later she moved into the overhaul and upscaling of the marketing delivery. Marwa feels her most significant achievement was forming a team of marketing and communications titans who eventually worked to improve brand equity and have tremendously grown the company’s marketing and PR value. Even during the pandemic, Al Masaood LLC’s brands experienced the greatest growth, with its PR value rising by over 700 percent and its sales increasing by six folds.

An Ever-Evolving Industry

As a veteran of the industry, Marwa would like much more cohesion and harmony among marketing and communication practitioners. Thanks to the abundance of data, the lines between marketing and communication practices have been blurred completely, and now the primary challenge is to know how to best leverage the data to help a brand thrive. Marwa believes introducing efficiencies across both disciplines is of utmost importance. Presently marketers are being challenged, and their roles are becoming extremely complex as they shoulder the additional responsibilities of business transformations. So, present-day marketing and communication practitioners need to start a brand’s transformation from the inside by developing performance-driven cultures and then transitioning it to reflect on the outside.

A Different Organization

Growth is an ongoing objective for everyone at Al Masaood. It needs continuous work and transformation to keep up with the changing market trends and customer preferences. As a part of the group’s customer-centric ethos, Al Masaood always looks to provide value-driven experiences and services to its clients and customers. As a company, Al Masaood places a strong emphasis on building long-standing and fruitful relationships with all of its stakeholders. Its vision of growing together, delivering value, and embracing heritage set the group apart from its competitors.

Picture of the Future

Since its inception Al Masaood has faithfully served the UAE across the fields it operates in. For over the last five decades, the group has moved in synergy with the UAE, and now as it embarks on the next 50 years journey, it is aligned with the country’s vision by continuously diversifying and investing in the economy’s key strategic sectors.

Marwa says, “Al Masaood’s future plans also consider the pressing environmental factors around us. As such, we have developed a strategy that places sustainability and innovation at the core. From electrification to renewables, clean energy, diversification, and customer centricity, we’ve got a busy agenda at hand.”

Judy Deuchar: Changing the Shopping Experience

Led by Judy Deuchar, TVSN is an experiential retailer with over 27 years in Australia and New Zealand as a broadcast, cable television, and satellite television network specializing in home shopping. The TVSN shopping network showcases a huge variety of products and prestigious brands, international trends in fashion, health, beauty, kitchen, electronics, homeware, and jewelry across several platforms including television, internet, printed catalog, mobile, and online applications. TVSN’s products are accessible to consumers from the comfort of their homes, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

The show takes viewers through an exhilarating ride of showcasing products and their features, benefits, brand stories, and journey to TVSN, with international guest presenters, customer testimonials, how-to’s, demonstrations, the odd bloopers, and a lot of fun, laughter, and sometimes tears.

Since its inception in 1996, TVSN has grown from strength to strength and has enviable expertise in video commerce within the fast-changing digital world. Customers can also access the platform using TV, tablets, and handheld devices, securing TVSN’s future in the digital age.

TVSN’s buyers often travel the world searching for new, unique, and exclusive quality products, emerging trends, and brands that TVSN knows its customers will love. All TVSN products undergo strict testing with the company’s Quality Assurance Team for compliance, safety, strength, and reliability before they go on sale.

The Experienced Leader

TVSN’s General Manager, Judy Deuchar is an experienced leader with strategic expertise in transformational business management, from merchandising, marketing, digital programming, logistics, and global retail. She is experienced in supply chain management, implementing multi-channel digital commerce optimization for brands and retailers. Judy’s proven strength lies in strategically driving merchandise and consumer technology to build brands and businesses for long-term growth.

Judy holds a Bachelor of Social Science in Clinical Psychology and a Post Graduate degree in Conflict Management and Marketing from the University of Cape Town and the University of Cape Town Business School, respectively. She is also a Global Winner of the CEW (Cosmetic Executive Women) Building Leaders Achiever Award 2009.

“Throwing myself into blue sky ideas is what motivates me to get up in the morning and continue to lead this amazing team.”

Her career started with the Foschini Group as a Diamond Buyer during her Graduate Program. She soon moved on to QVC, holding several buying roles, before being promoted to Senior Vice President of Merchandise, Planning, and Operations.

Judy also owned a Brand Consultancy Business, where she led a team of 10 and looked after Elle as their global Managing Director for jewelry and accessories. She was instrumental in establishing several Elle stores across the Asia-Pacific, working with several high-profile clients like Lulu Guinness.

Measuring the Success

Judy measures her success by her ability and resilience to rise when times are tough. She always prefers to lead by example in order to promote team effectiveness and collaboration. She feels setting the right goals ensures success for a business and motivates individual contributors to drive performance and ensure growth and business sustainability.

Judy feels taking smart risks in her day-to-day activities to drive TVSN’s business forward is one of the biggest challenges. Also, things like enhancing effectiveness, inspiring others, developing employees, leading a team, guiding change, and managing internal and external stakeholders come with their own set of challenges.

Implementing New Ideas

As an experiential retailer, TVSN is fully committed to providing a seamless customer experience consistently and ethically. An experience that excites and surprises customers with retail experiences available to them anytime, anywhere.

As TVSN’s General Manager, Judy plans to start multi-channel streaming, which will maximize the organization’s video commerce asset, helping it to take on new products streamed across multiple channels to suit the individual customer, including new exciting website channels that include video playlist apps as well as syndicated social media channels.

“We aspire to ensure that new customers are excited about what they have discovered and shop with TVSN. Existing customers continue to return because they love the experience and want more and more. We promise to deliver a unique, entertaining, and engaging shopping experience. We will excite, entertain and inform our customers by showcasing the best products, trends, and brands from around the world. We will never stop looking for ways to support, service, and delight our customers.”– says Judy.

Elizabeth Cowper: Transforming Workplaces for Working Women

Meet Elizabeth Cowper, the Founder, and CEO of Ludo, which is on a mission to engage female talent in the workforce. Ludo is about tech for inclusion, working to close the gender pay gap, educating, informing, and supporting HR. It is a B2B SaaS product that provides content and resource to all employees from its expert partners. Alongside this, the company also provides needed tools for HR to help drive a culture of inclusion and education for line managers to engage talent.

Under Elizabeth’s leadership, Ludo launched its first module to transform the maternity journey in 2021, with its next module, Ludo Menopause, scheduled to launch in October 2022. It also has Ludo Health, Ludo Fertility, and Ludo Parents in its product pipeline for 2023.

Ludo helps working new parents connect via the company, geography, or industry sector. Based on the expecting parents’ preference, Ludo sends alerts to the line manager and HR to keep in touch when the employee is out on maternity leave. The organization also has learning hub videos to support HR in guiding line managers to help parents as they grow their families.

The Farsighted Leader

As a working parent, Elizabeth understands the challenges parents face juggling the demands of a busy job and children. Also, she realized that if we continue at the same rate, closing the gender pay gap will take over 136 years. McKinsey once said, “Intervention is necessary to bridge the gender gap.” and Ludo is the intervention.

Elizabeth says, “Women are still underrepresented in the workplace, and we must hurry history to shift the dial. We help companies do exactly that.”

Global productivity losses related to menopause topped $150bn last year. And women typically drop out of the workforce when they are most likely to step into senior roles due to the age range where women are impacted by perimenopause and menopause.

After leaving University, Ludo’s founder Elizabeth initiated her career in recruitment, then onto HR. She completed her CIPD training in the UK and trained as a Master Coach, Strengths Finder Coach, and NLP Master Practitioner, which has supported her in developing individuals, and great teams to maximize collective success.

Elizabeth has had an illustrious career of nearly three decades in HR, working for companies like LVMH, Planet Organic, Network Rail, Harvey Nichols and Tapestry. She was awarded HR Most Influential 5 years in a row and has been described as a Culture Adjuster. Being a mother of three, Elizabeth completely understands the challenges of a working mother. Also, due to her role as an HR leader, she has witnessed some incredible women drop out of the workforce during critical life stages, including maternity leaves and menopause. So, she always wanted to change how people support women in the workplace, drive towards gender parity and close the gender pay gap.

Tackling the Gender Pay Gap

According to the latest number, globally, women earn 82 cents to every $1 for men, which is not good enough. This also has a knock-on effect on women’s wealth all the way to the value of their pensions.

Menopause is when most women struggle to stay in the workforce, leaving at a significant time in their careers. So, Ludo needs to work to support and retain female talent to maintain board diversity.

Ludo helps employees going through maternity and menopause by providing the needed help, support, and guidance. The organization helps attract and retain female talents and educates on the importance of gender parity.

The Pandemic

Elizabeth started her entrepreneurial journey in April 2020. She stepped out of corporate life into a global lockdown, which was nerve-wracking. She was also solo parenting three kids at home while running focus groups online and putting together the vision and plan for the tech. While looking back, Elizabeth realizes it was all possible due to the available technology. However, the lack of human contact made it harder to build Ludo’s team.

As the founder of Ludo, Elizabeth believes the pandemic has terribly affected working mothers, and it single-handedly pushed back women’s development in the workplace by more than ten years.

Getting Ready for the Future

Elizabeth says, “We are launching Ludo Health, Ludo Fertility, and Ludo Parents in 2023. We have plans for an HR Mastermind group too, and we run Ludo Red Tent events. A red tent is a women’s circle to allow women to have a voice and share in a safe environment.”

Ludo is working to create a future workplace where employees can tune into their inner compass and be their authentic selves. The organization can achieve this by creating a safe, inclusive culture, raising self-awareness, guiding and supporting employees through their life journeys. Presently Ludo is raising investment, and it is the firm’s second investment round that will help it expand the business globally, grow the team, and develop the tech with several new features.

Destra Consulting Group LLC: Transforming Organizations Across the World

Founded in 1985, Destra Consulting Group LLC , is a strategic business transformation firm working with Fortune 500 clients, start-ups, governments, and educational organizations for over three decades. Destra currently has a team of more than ten associates in the U.S. It also has an affiliate in Australia, where the organization designed large client engagements in Lean/Six Sigma and Change Management for BHP Billiton and Telstra, among other companies.

Destra is best known for its expertise in change management, leadership development, and operational excellence. As an organization, Destra believes that informed, talented, and committed people transform organizations across the world. So, the firm focuses on helping unleash the power of people and organizations by providing the understanding and tools to improve processes, lead change, and accelerate execution.

The Passionate Leader

A management consultant with over two decades of experience, Bette Smith serves as the Principal of Destra Consulting Group LLC. She works with companies undergoing business transformation and does the work of assessment, design, delivery, and evaluation of initiatives for companies and organizations in every industry.

Bette says, “My professional journey is fairly eclectic. The golden thread that runs throughout my career is a focus on organizational learning and support for business success.”

After getting an undergraduate degree in Russian, Bette completed her post-graduate semester in Leningrad, Russia. One of her first jobs afterward was working for a U.S.-based conglomerate, where she managed the launch of their Moscow office. Later she returned to the U.S. to work for a workplace learning program in Denver. At this point of time, Bette got the opportunity to work with several companies, including AT&T, The Denver Post, Samsonite, etc. Then she received an interdisciplinary Master of Social Science degree in Philosophy and Education from the University of Colorado Denver.

Before becoming a partner with Destra, Bette served CQG Inc., as the Vice President of Communications and Director of Organizational Learning, and was the Director of J.P. Morgan Center for Commodities at the University of Colorado Denver. In 2021, Bette became the CEO/Owner of Destra Consulting Group, as her business partner David Hannegan Jr. retired after more than 20 years with the company.

Bette says, “I joined Destra in 2013 – Josef Schroeter (now the Owner of Schroeter Consulting), the CEO of the software company where I worked for 12 years, made an introduction and recommended me to the current partners. It was a life-changing experience; I immediately realized that I could use all of my skills in Organizational Development to help Destra continue its mission to serve as a trusted partner to its clients and support their employees’ growth and development.”

The Greatest Accomplishment

In 2016, Bette and her business partner redesigned Destra’s Accelerating Change and TransitionsTM organizational change model. She was instrumental in moving the organization’s model to a new place; Destra incorporated most of the latest research on change management which included recent work in behavioral change, and feedback collected from the firm’s clients. For all these reasons, the updated model is much better received. Bette feels the most rewarding of all is using this model with Destra’s clients, supporting them in developing internal change capability, and witnessing their success in leading change initiatives irrespective of size.

Bette states, “Transitioning the business to single ownership is also a significant accomplishment. I enjoy the challenges and rewards of operating the business, and I am actively engaging with new colleagues, collaborators, and clients to move Destra forward.”

Although Destra has a global footprint and does most of its work nationally in the U.S., it is also working to build a presence in the greater Indianapolis area as a member of the Indy Chamber.

Key Differentiators

As a consulting firm, Destra values two primary things that separate it from other competitors:

Diversity of Experience: Destra works as easily with small emerging companies as it does with larger, global transnational corporations. This tremendous experience helps the firm quickly understand every client’s challenges and create solutions to meet their evolving needs.

Collaborative Process vs. ‘Expert’: Destra’s approach for consulting is to partner with its client’s leadership and employees throughout the lifecycle of its services. The firm understands that combining its expertise with its clients builds ownership in the effort, fuels greater success, and ultimately transfers knowledge and builds client capabilities.

Picture of the Future

Recently Destra launched Destra Coaching with a few new associates. Experienced in years of coaching and training in change management and process improvement, Bette now provides coaching for individuals and organizations ready to take their leadership to a higher level.

At present, the firm is planning to create a digital platform/application for its Accelerating Change and TransitionsTM model and tools. This would create an added value for the firm’s clients who choose to license and white-label Destra’s I.P.

Fai Chan: A Ground-breaking Leader stimulating growth in the Luxury Skincare Segment

A charismatic personality and resourceful leader, Fai Chan is the Founder of Deli Aroma. Founded in 2014, the company brings forth luxury skincare of the highest quality at the most competitive price. Presenting forth Fai’s professional and personal journey.

Early Days

After graduating with a Marketing Degree in Hong Kong, Fai’s career jumpstarted in the US with the American Dream for immigrants to pursue. She started as a homemaker but got involved in community charitable work.

At that time, she worked in a Chinese Christian Community Organization in Dallas as a cashier in the bookstore. She wrote articles for their monthly newspaper. After six months, her boss asked her if she wanted to get promoted to the Manager position.

She was also a member of the International Women’s Club of Dallas Chapter and they offered her a board position. If she took it, she would be the first Chinese to be on board.

Additionally, she was also the secretary of the Ikebana club in Dallas, the Japanese Floral Arrangement Club. Unlike other homemakers, she actively participated in promoting the art and cultural activities of Dallas when she was there.

Then she moved to Jackson MS with her husband’s job relocation. She stayed there for six years and then moved to Austin TX.

Fai successfully finished her aromatherapy or aroma medicine courses and has been actively helping people with aromatherapy. She had more than ten publications while she was a student.

She then went ahead to set up her clinic offering therapeutic work. Somehow, she got invited to speak at research conferences and wrote a few articles on Rheumatoid Arthritis, Alzheimer’s Disease, and High blood pressure.

In terms of career, her medical research work gains popularity and got accepted by the mainstream. This motivated her to set up a laboratory for carrying out her original invention both in products and treatment protocols.

Instead of applying for research grants, she independently published her work through marketing and promoted the work that can be monetized through treatments, product innovations, and collaboration with other labs in promoting their innovative products.

In this way, she could do things her way and need not be twisted by her original purpose in satisfying the preconditions set by her sponsors.

About the Clinic – Deli Aroma

Fai has a clinic to provide treatment work through her award-winning treatment protocols through her peer-reviewed conference speech and publications.

She sells her innovative formulations but in safe and effective dosages and usages. To be specific, she chooses her subjects for treatment to participate in a small clinical trial with the hope to provide insights for more research to follow.

Her positioning is more ideas/insights related to other participating research to do the detailing.

Motivation: A Constant Drive

When Fai started her company, she did not aim for heights. In the beginning, she just wanted to make some extra money, however, with time, as she started successfully growing, her vision for the company got clearer.

She further decided to expand her horizons to boost women’s careers, especially those who strike between ends and means.

She also shifted to support Artists who need money to develop their careers. “As I like to say, the light of a match is dim, but a bunch of matches makes the light bright. Something a person starts small and trivial, but with more people joining, the results are different. Without governmental support, what we can do is very limited. I think our government should research more good causes that really can boost our economy in meaningful ways too”, adds Fai.

Thoughts about the Asian Business Environment

The Asian business environment is super promising. One can find 100 reasons why they should invest in a place or not or where to have their headquarters.

Fai measures this by recognizing how eager a place’s/country’s people are willing to spend money. The EU people are not too eager to purchase consumer goods, and that’s why their economic conditions are very stagnant. They talk about environmental friendly which is to minimize wastage. However, without wastage, can an economy grow?

However, in Asia, this is different. People in Asia are more willing to spend, upgrade, or seek pleasure through purchasing. As the economic conditions are improving, their behaviour is more hedonistic, which makes prediction simpler and easier.

A Take on Gender Pay Gap

Fai openly expresses her pragmatic opinion regarding the gender pay gap. People always complain about the gender pay gap but Fai doesn’t think it is created by employers.

She believes the interview performance determines the pay one will get. The interview and work performance determines how much the employers will reward, even with bonuses.

When Fai was working in Hong Kong, she didn’t experience a gender pay gap. While everyone likes to express how passionate he or she has about a job, she thinks showing thoughtfulness, skills, and EQ can give you a better edge in achieving what you want to achieve.

Fai suggests an excellent way of handling the gender pay gap, “There are cases that one asks for the reward system but only finds that he or she is underpaid after they take the job. I think people’s talents and abilities are different. It would be good if you have a middleman to bargain the package for you in a more satisfying way like through a recruitment agency or talent acquisition or headhunter. They have more market information accessible and know what the market wants and is willing to pay. With the middlemen, both sides may feel more accepting and have fewer complaints.”

The Vision

Fai and her company will focus on medical research advancement and bring advanced healing to the community. It includes self-care protocols to be inclusive, apart from treatment protocols done by professionals.

Accelerating an Innovative

Future Currently, Deli Aroma is operating based on the existing theoretical frameworks. The company will be bringing in more inventive frameworks which are more laser-focused to make the treatment prediction more precise.

Recently, it is also targeting more on genetic healing and brought in a new formula to rebuild on Einstein’s relativity formula that is widely used in functional medicine.

Fai thinks their invention is more accurate and can improve conventional medicine treatment results.

From 2023, Deli Aroma will have more to disclose on new treatment frameworks. As Fai envisions, what seems impossible today, technological advancements can bring miraculous treatment results tomorrow. “So, if you are not happy with what the present medical system can provide, a little patience and good communication can bring good results. We compete with time, and many researchers work hard and burn the midnight oil to make this happens”, concludes Fai.

Fai pens Words of Wisdom

Every person has a life value if turned to the monetary value which is the money that he or she can generate in one’s whole life. I like to capitalize on one’s lifelong value in formulating my strategy. That it is not the present value, but makes use of the past, present, and (discounted) future value.

Ángela Álvarez: Revolutionizing the Current Generation of Financial Infrastructure

Meet Ángela Álvarez, the founder and Executive Chairman of Action Monkey, a Permissioned Defi Platform. She is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of Aglaia Capital, a new-generation of corporate finance boutique covering traditional business, and digital assets, and advising on token-generating events. The firm also provides expansion and growth solutions for companies, investors, and governments in the Philippines.

Over the years, Ángela has developed her professional career chairing executive international positions and boards in several global entities, banks, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and investment banking, mainly in financial, real estate, hotels, restructuring, and alternative financing sectors including, fintech blockchain, crypto, and DeFi.

A veteran of the industry, Ángela worked at BBVA in several positions, including Head of Investment Banking and member of the Risk Committee of the Iberian Special Assets Situations unit, Member of the Executive Committee of BBVA Consumer Finance and the Digital Bank Uno-e Bank, and Head of Corporate Development for the acquisitions of Consumer Finance, Insurance and Financial Institutions in Europe, Asia, USA, and Brazil. Before that, she headed the Corporate Finance and M&A European Financial Institutions Group team in Spain at KPMG. Ángela has also worked at PWC Corporate Finance, Bankinter, Citibank, and All Trading AVB.

A speaker at several Economic Forums, Ángela is passionate about decentralized technologies and cooperation business models, and she is active in the international M&A, Fintech, and Blockchain space.

As the leader of Aglaia Capital, Ángela’s vision to develop a new financial infrastructure to provide liquidity to the Private Capital Markets focused on Alternative Investments and Financing with blockchain has led her to create and develop another venture, Aglaia Capital DeFi Platform, well known better for its brand Action Monkey, a Permissioned DeFi Platform,

The New Generation of Financial Infrastructure

Action Money is a present-generation financial infrastructure with blockchain that provides liquidity, scalability, and efficiency to the Private Capital markets. It offers native crypto services and investment banking covering the entire life cycle of crypto assets.

Primarily focused on security tokens, Action Monkey represents a crucial step toward digitizing and modernization of financial markets by creating a much more liquid, resilient, open, and accessible financial system.

Action Money is a DeFi platform presently deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain focused on Security Tokens. It also covers all the necessary functionalities of a crypto asset, from issuance to sale. Its functionalities include tokenization or distribution, compliance, custody, exchange of fiat currency- crypto, purchase, and sale of the tokens listed on the platform and connected to an automatic liquidity protocol.

Additionally, Action Monkey’s clients have the needed access to other related services before and after the issuance. These services include advising on all aspects of the Token generating event through affiliated companies and independent experts.

The Present Business Environment

Ángela says, “We are living in a moment where we are immersed in a shift of a new financial infrastructure that will transform the financial industry and the rest later.”

She feels that the financial industry will be transformed over the next few years, and few players will disappear from the market. An entirely new financial infrastructure backed by the blockchain and central digital currencies will eventually transform some of the financial institutions into something new.

Ángela believes the new incumbents will be much more prepared for this new environment than the traditional financial institutions, ensuring a shift of useability towards the new financial infrastructure.

The Private Capital Market is expected to be the most disrupted market, as it is the most fragmented and biggest traded market. It also needs an evolution that can happen massively in the short term. This will eventually allow the inclusion and democratization of the private capital markets, efficiency, automatization, and transparency. Additionally, the remarkable combination of metaverse and crypto infrastructure will develop more efficient systems to transact massively, evolving the e-commerce models as we conceive them presently.

Bringing in New Values

Ángela feels diversity is of utmost importance for any company that will make a difference in the short term. The gender pay gap should not exist in any modern company aspiring to survive in the short term.

She states, “For me, it doesn’t make any difference what is the gender of any person in a whatever position they may have in a company. What makes the difference are the traits, skills, knowledge, values, as well as have character enough to be resilient.”

Action Monkey’s culture is based on consensus, balance, and a fair way of doing business. Angela’s vision is to change the current financial infrastructure and include some values from the world of crypto to the world of traditional finance. She believes in decentralization, disintermediation, openness, fairness, and flexibility in business which are also within the essence of Action Monkey and what she would like to add to this new infrastructure.

Picture of the Future

As a permissioned DeFi platform, Action Monkey is already a pioneer, unique of its kind, a new generation of financial infrastructure transforming Private Capital Markets globally. With its unique approach, Action Monkey covers the entire lifecycle of crypto assets. Conceived from an investment banking and crypto perspective, the DeFi platform was born as an effective way to solve some of the critical issues found in the industry.

The platform also converts the Private Capital Market into a much more scalable, efficient, transparent, and liquid with a new financial infrastructure for funds, alternative investments, and alternative financing industries.

For the future, Angela and her team at Action Monkey, also with the support of Aglaia Capital deal flow, are planning to feed Action Monkey with current or new Alternative Investment Funds, Real Estate, Hotels, and Crypto Funds to escalate the market’s needs.