2017 Board of Directors

Rappler’s 2017 Board of Directors has 5 members, down from 7 during the 2014-2016 period.

Those who resigned from their Board posts during the period of 2014 to 2016 were Nix Nolledo, Felicia Hung Atienza, and James Velasquez.

Here are Rappler’s 2017 officers: 

Manny Ayala, Chairman of the Board Manny is a founder at 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 in 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.    Maria A. Ressa, President 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 and 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.  Glenda M. Gloria, Vice President 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. She played a key role in harnessing social media for the network’s 2010 election coverage. 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 Danguilan-Vitug, a groundbreaking 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 2017-2018 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. James Bitanga, Treasurer James is a legal consultant, entrepreneur, and investor in the technology space. As an investor, his portfolio includes New York-based sharing vacation rentals site Tansler. He is also involved in various media and technology investments through Dolphin Fire. James also currently serves as a consultant to technology MNCs with global disruptive legal services firm Axiom following years of in-house counsel experience in IBM. His expertise includes alliances, digital partnerships, data privacy, and strategic commercial support for outsourcing, systems integration, software licensing, and cloud services, across all major industries in Asian markets. James previously spent time supporting several projects with the Supreme Court of the Philippines during the term of former Chief Justice Reynato Puno. Prior to that, he was a commercial and securities litigator in New York. His other engagements include sitting on the David Pollock Scholarship Committee in relation to the advocacy for Families in Global Transition and a teaching stint in the FEU-La Salle JD-MBA Program. James graduated with a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School after earning a degree in Management in Communications Technology from the Ateneo de Manila University. He is a member of the New York Bar. Dan Albert S. De Padua

Dan is a lawyer who has spent the greater part of his professional life in the media industry. Through over 25 years, first at GMA Network, Inc and later at TV5 Network Inc, he held various senior executive posts with primary responsibility over news and public affairs, operations and programming, network and production engineering, and facilities and administration. He was a professorial lecturer at the College of Mass Communication of the University of the Philippines for more than 10 years, and now teaches media economics and technology at the University of Asia and the Pacific. He also currently writes a regular column for BusinessMirror.

Before joining media, Dan practiced law at Castillo, Laman, Tan & Pantaleon where he eventually focused on corporate special projects. He later worked in the Kuok group, owners of the Shangri-la hotels. He had a brief stint in government, as well, acting as secretary of the Senate Committee on Public Information and Mass Media. Dan graduated from the University of the Philippines with a Bachelor of Science in Business Economics, magna cum laude. He completed the Military Science Advanced Course at the same time. He then obtained his law degree, cum laude, also from the University of the Philippines. – Rappler.com