Janelle Katipunan-Ante (Jen)
General Manager
Dona Maria Rice Surprise Inc. (Subsidiary of the Sterling Group of Companies)
Three things you make sure you focus on in your work:
Living the Brand: I always put into heart my brand’s Vision and Mission. This keeps me focused in living that brand promise. I am proud to be with Dona Maria Rice; it provides the best tasting rice to both local and international markets. I am also proud to promote a LOCAL brand supporting our FILIPINO FARMERS.
Always go the extra mile: This always helps me to think positive, be creative and resourceful.
Serve with a happy heart: being in the service industry for almost two decades now, in Food and Beverage, has given me fulfillment in providing excellent service.
Top tip for your Hospitality colleagues:
Always be grateful to have the opportunity to serve others, in any way you can.
Your activities:
My family and I started an advocacy project to promote Marine Conservation in May 2018. We organize beach clean-up’s, as well as ocean clean-up dive’s for scuba divers.
We conduct annual and bi-annual clean-ups in Anilao, Batangas. We have also been blessed to encourage young leaders to love scuba diving, in the pursuit of creating innovations for preserving our beaches and marine life.
Personal Advocacy: My family loves the beach so much. We have a daughter, our youngest (Mia) who has speech delays and we started taking her with us to the outdoors and on beach clean-ups, to expose her more. After the first beach clean-up we did ourselves, we got a call from my daughter’s teacher asking us for a PTA. She told us that our daughter had reached a new milestone in school; she had started presenting in class about her beach clean-up experiences. She talked about seashells, how PLASTIC is “yucky”, and that you should throw your trash in the bin.
Mia’s milestone is what pushed us to start this advocacy. And my eldest daughter, Kimi being a licensed scuba diver at age of 11 has encouraged her friends to lead clean-up dives and coral restoration, to preserve and protect the marine life.
Aspirations: We envision holding summer beach camps for young families, and young leaders, to encourage them to create their own programs to protect the marine life. We will launch other sustainable campaigns for educating boat men, tourists and communities to work together.
