EVEN at a young age, Nina Datu-Aguas knew that she deserved to be in a better place when the time comes for her to pursue her career.
Nina is a senior business leader with a strong track record spanning over 30 years across retail and private banking. She has managed global, regional and country level businesses and operations in large international companies across both developed and emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific and the US.
She has a proven track record of building new businesses as well as defending and growing large existing businesses in highly-competitive and challenging environments, and through difficult economic cycles ranging from the Asian crisis to the recent global financial crisis. She likewise has a demonstrated ability to transform ailing operations into profitable businesses poised for growth.
Her strong profile is relatively unique, given that her roles have been multi-faceted as well as end-to-end in coverage. Nina’s professional success is in large measure due to an exceptional set of knowledge, skills and values. Principal among these are her strategic vision and sound financial acumen, operational and risk management orientation, focus on transformational client-centricity, inherent multicultural sensitivity and finely honed stakeholder management.
She has a strong sales, distribution and marketing background, particularly in retail financial services, and is also associated with highly-successful quality and re-engineering programmes. Nina is a team builder, whose ability to identify and nurture talent has enabled her to assemble high-performing teams and manage large scale businesses across Asia.
Following her storied career in international and local banking, Nina now has her sights set on being where she can be most relevant. With a large portion of the Philippine population still having limited to no access to financial services, Nina hopes to educate more Filipinos on the importance of life insurance and, in turn, insure the lives of more Filipino families.
“I chose to do the right thing. I studied hard, earned good grades, and was an active student leader. I really made sure to pass the accountancy exam take one because I didn’t want a repeat performance. At work, I carried the same discipline, worked hard, rounded up my leadership and management skills savoring every learning opportunity, developed a strong work ethic, built my network and willingly took on increased and new responsibilities,” Aguas told the BusinessMirror.
“I began my career with SGV being a CPA. But I was always attracted to banking so after a few years I shifted to banking full blast. I spent over 30 years working for multinational institutions in the country and many parts of the world where I was given a strong platform to excel and lead a diverse group of people. My years of working overseas in New York and Singapore were everything I hoped they would be and more, as a professional and as an individual,” she added.
Aguas is one proud woman and Filipina who cherishes her work experiences in the male-dominated industry. She said she practically grew up with equally huge and iconic multinational institutions — SGV, Citibank, ANZ — where the Boards and Senior Management teams were mostly male. Despite this, she was identified and put on a fast track in Citibank, particularly, and was given senior leadership management positions, heading critical functions and businesses in Asia where her counterparts within Asia and in other regions, Europe, US and Latin America were men.
“To have a brown skinned Filipina lead a group of people of different races, mostly men, was particularly interesting and fun. Traveling with my team for example, many of their friends who we happen to meet at the boarding gates would readily assume I was the girl Friday only to find out I was not seating with them in couch but in first or business class. It brings a smile,” she reminisced.
That’s why this charming lady boss believes that the barrier of gender equality has already been crossed by the Filipino women nowadays. She said there is a heightened reality of the contributions of women in our mainstream day-to-day lives. And this March because of International Women’s Day we saw more women celebrated and honored in many different venues in various fields and endeavors.
“We are very fortunate as the Philippines places high on gender equality; most woman-friendly country in the world. Thank God for the Filipino male, they love their moms, sisters and significant others and are confident and generous. (We need to keep our men happy!)”
For Aguas, anybody can be the best person for the job, not about being male/female or in between. At work, she believes in an open door policy and she advocates transparency and honesty: “My success as a leader depends on the success of my people, so there has to be a culture of empowerment and open communication. People must be given second chances for honest mistakes (not malicious) as the lessons they would have learned, believe me, will never be forgotten.”
She believes hers is a journey of a lifetime that continues to be lived, that she will always be work in progress. “As with many careers of equal measure if not more, the rise, as you term it, had its share of highlights and lowlights. But one thing for sure, the ride was joyful and continues to be,” she said.
As a woman leader of an iconic company, Aguas promises to keep Insular as the ‘Most Trusted Brand’ in the life insurance industry. “Being the distinction we carry proud and tall, it is incumbent on all of us to secure the organization’s future decades from now. The attributes of trustworthiness and credibility, quality, value, understanding customer needs, innovation, and social responsibility are intangible but powerful measures that we will continue to pursue and live by.”
Given a huge responsibility, she also hopes to inspire others. “But if to inspire means I can be a role model for others then I am in. It is good to have dreams and to stretch out one’s aspirations to get to the top, but we must remember too, it is likewise about the narrative on the quality of the journey. The reality is not everyone will become CEO. The organizational pyramid is narrower at the tip of the top.”
But for Aguas being wife, mother, grandmother rolled into one is the best among her many jobs. She said she always looks forward to Sunday home-cooked lunch or dinner with husband Mario, children Marni and Nick Alvarez, Ana and Rene Aguirre, Carlo and AJ, Mark and Carina, Ryan and Svet; and their 10 grandchildren.
And how does she handle all these challenging tasks? Simple. She banks oh her being a woman.
“For me personally, being a woman makes it easier to show compassion and empathy, not in a negative way, but our insights and instincts allow us to read and interpret events and circumstances naturally, and these often strengthen a technical decision. Our seeming softness and quieter disposition are our strengths. Malikot and isip ng babae; we are able to process a lot of information all at the same time.”