Rappler’s 2018 Board of Directors

Four new members join Rappler’s Board of Directors for 2018. They are former socio-economic planning secretary Solita “Winnie” Monsod, veteran lawyer Fulgencio “Jun” S. Factoran Jr, technology entrepreneur Carlo Almendral, and corporate lawyer Federico Prieto. 

Three founding members of the Rappler Board remain as directors this year. They are Maria A. Ressa, Manny Ayala, and Glenda M. Gloria.

Here are the brief profiles of the 2018 Board of Directors (in alphabetical order):  

Carlo Almendral

Carlo is a serial entrepreneur who had previously started venture-backed companies in games, financial inclusion technology, ecommerce, education, and data science. He has released over 30 technology products with millions of users. He currently sits on the corporate boards of an animation company, a cybersecurity company, and a cryptocurrency startup.   In Carlo’s philanthropy work, he is currently heading the Innovation Council for The United Nations’ World Food Programme, serves on the Board of Governors for The Commonwealth Club, and is a board advisor for the Adopt A Pet Foundation. Carlo taught data science at UC Berkeley and social entrepreneurship at San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco. 

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Manny Ayala

Manny is a founder of Hatchd Inc, a technology incubator focused on building great internet and mobile brands, and the managing director of Endeavor Philippines. He was previously a managing director at IRG Ltd, a HK-based M&A boutique focused on the telecoms, media, and tech industries. At IRG, Manny focused on a variety of projects on the internet, mobile, television, and online gaming sectors.    Manny was the number two executive at Discovery Networks Asia, where he oversaw strategic planning, programming, on-air branding, and program sales. He was instrumental in building Discovery Channel and Animal Planet into top-rated TV channels across the region. Before joining Discovery, Manny was deputy general manager for TNT and Cartoon Network Asia, an AOL Time Warner TV channel, where he was a key member of the team that launched the service across the Asia Pacific.  Prior to that, Manny worked for STAR TV where he was part of the team that acquired the Don Bluth Animation Studio as well as a number of the world’s key Chinese-language film libraries. Manny has an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and a BA, cum laude, from Yale University.   

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Glenda M. Gloria

Glenda studied to be a journalist during the Marcos years. Revolutions and transitions shaped her career and temperament. She worked for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Manila Times, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and for international news agencies. In the dying days of the Estrada administration, she co-founded Newsbreak, which started as a weekly news magazine and became one of the Philippines’ leading investigative reporting organizations. From 2008 to January 2011, she managed ANC, the ABS-CBN News Channel, as its chief operating officer. Under her management, ANC grew its revenue and acted as the harbinger of new initiatives for the ABS-CBN news group. Glenda now manages the Rappler newsroom, merging traditional journalism with innovative crowd-sourcing social media techniques. She’s written numerous books including Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao with Marites Dañguilan-Vitug, a book on the conflict in Mindanao that won the National Book Award. In 2011, she wrote The Enemy Within: An Inside Story on Military Corruption with the late Aries Rufo and Gemma Bagayaua-Mendoza. Glenda finished journalism at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. A British Chevening scholar, she holds a master’s degree in political sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a 2018 Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

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Fulgencio ‘Jun’ S. Factoran, Jr.

Jun is the managing partner of Factoran & Associates Law Offices. He served various government posts, including secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources from 1987 to 1992, and deputy executive secretary in the Office of the President of the Philippines from 1986 to 1987. He also served as the deputy executive secretary at Philippine National Oil Company.

Among other positions he holds include chairman of Geologistics Incorporated, Agility Inc, and GAIA South Incorporated; director of Belle Resources Inc, Banco de Oro Leasing & Finance, Geo-Surveys & Mapping Inc, and Equitable Card Network Inc; independent director at Nickel Asia Corporation; independent director of Atlas Consolidated Mining & Development Corp; independent director of Central Azucarera De Tarlac; director of Equitable PCI Bank, Inc; director of Belle Corporation; director of Business Certification International, Ltd, Philippine National Oil Company, and National Development Corporation.  Jun obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (cum laude) and Bachelor of Laws degree (valedictorian) from the University of the Philippines, and his Master of Laws degree from the Harvard Law School.

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Solita ‘Winnie’ Collas Monsod

An economist, teacher, writer and broadcaster, Winnie was appointed the Philippines’ first socio-economic planning secretary after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. She is professor emerita at the University of the Philippines’ (UP) School of Economics, where she taught starting 1983.

Winnie served at the United Nations Committee on Development Policy and was convenor and member of the Advisory Board of the UNDP Human Development Report. For 11 years, she was chairperson of the Philippine Human Development Network. She also served on the advisory board of the South Centre in Geneva and the Board of Trustees of the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Washington, DC, and was a member of the High Level Task Force of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Winnie finished her degree in economics in UP and obtained her masters in economics at the University of Pennsylvania. 

She is at present the chair of the Movement for Good Governance. Among many awards on leadership, governance and journalism, she was given the Most Outstanding Alumna Award by the UP Alumni Association in 2005.

Winnie writes a column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and BusinessWorld, and hosts GMA News TV’s weekly current affairs show “Bawal ang Pasaway kay Mareng Winnie” and appears twice weekly in “Unang Hirit,” also on GMA News. 

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Federico Prieto

Federico is a lawyer with litigation and corporate practice. For his litigation practice he handles criminal, civil, labor and tax cases. His corporate practice involves mergers & acquisitions, business organization and restructuring, IPO offering and regulatory compliance, among others. He is a 2006 graduate of San Beda University’s College of Law in Mendiola and was admitted to the Bar in May 2007. Federico is a lawyer and the corporate Secretary of Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. 

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Maria A. Ressa

Maria has been a journalist in Asia for more than 30 years – nearly a decade as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila, and another decade as the global network’s Jakarta bureau chief. She became CNN’s lead investigative reporter focusing on terrorism networks. In 2003, the Simon & Schuster group published her first book, the first from the region documenting the growth of Jemaah Islamiyah and its links to al-Qaeda, Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia.  In 1987, Maria was one of the founders of Probe, an independent production company. In 2005, she became the senior vice president of ABS-CBN’s news group, heading the largest multi-platform news operation in the Philippines for 6 years.   Maria taught courses in politics and the press for her alma mater, Princeton University, and in broadcast principles at the University of the Philippines. Her latest book, From Bin Laden to Facebook, was part of her work as author-in-residence and senior fellow at the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research in Singapore. She is also the Southeast Asia Visiting Scholar at CORE Lab at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. – Rappler.com

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