Changing of the Guard

When we started Philippine Business magazine 12 years ago, we thought of a fairly simple, straightforward plan to publish a quarterly business magazine. From that modest start, we are proud to say that we’ve been able to build the magazine up a little bit into a monthly with an accompanying website and electronic newsletter. All that would not have been possible without a great staff of writers, designers, and photographers.

Bill Luz, Chubby Lopa, and Nonette Climaco

With this issue, I am pleased to announce a changing of the guard and introduce the new team managing Philippine Business. In reality, the team is not all that new. Managing editor Nonette Climaco has, for instance been with the Makati Business Club for 18 years, starting as an analyst and rising to head of research, a post she still holds. She’s also been managing editor of the magazine for 12 years now. Nonette now moves up to take over the publisher and editor-in-chief roles of the magazine, positions I’ve held since we started the magazine. It goes without saying that Nonette assumes the post with plenty of experience, something that she will now apply on both the editorial and business sides of the magazine.

Our new managing editor succeeding Nonette is Isabel “Chubby” Lopa. Chubby joined us earlier this year as the deputy managing editor after having worked 6 years in the Ayala Foundation. She has helped both Nonette and myself tremendously in the editing and production side of the magazine, tirelessly following up with writers and production team and reviewing and polishing their work into a finished product for subscribers and newsstand readers. Chubby will now take over as our managing editor.

This changing of the guard completes our new editorial team line-up covering our other publications, the MBC Research Report (under Mike Mundo) and our CongressWatch Report (under Edward Gacusana).

Incidentally, though most people may be familiar with our print publications, many may be unaware of our expanding online publications. Our institutional site, www.mbc.com.ph, covers all the activities of the Makati Business Club, including a fairly comprehensive collection of all speeches delivered before the MBC over the last 24 years. Our business site, www.philippinebusiness.com.ph, contains everything contained in the magazine and much more. Finally, we also manage a website dedicated to our counter-corruption projects known as www.tag.org.ph.

We hope you find time to enjoy reading reports from our small family of publications.

GUILLERMO M. LUZ
Publisher & Editor-in-chief