Boardroom Tea: Robina, 5 others win Babae Awards
“Mabait”
She is known only as Robina, the most hilarious, outspoken, unpretentious and self-effacing billionaire I have ever met.
But last night, seated at Table 4 while we waited for the Babae Awards at the ASEAN Economic Summit Gala Night to begin, I heard a story I didn’t know. When the mother of Bayo’s Anna Lagon died, Robina quietly stood by the family by continuing to give them a chance to do business with Robinsons Retail.
ArteFino’s Marites Pineda, seated to my right, summed it up in one word: “mabait.” I looked across the table at Robina and realized that word is not often used for the richest in this country. She earned it.
The Gokongwei gift, it turns out, is not forgetting where you came from.
“Our family owes a great deal to her strength”
“My Lola Juanita was widowed in 1939 with six children. My father, the eldest, was only 13. She and my father worked to support the family through those difficult years. Our family owes a great deal to her strength,” Robina said in her speech.
As the next generations of billionaires take the helm across Philippine business, that one is worth writing down. Fortunes get inherited. The memory of how close it all came to nothing has to be taught.
“Kicked upstairs”
The other lesson, surprisingly, is not to take yourself too seriously. “When I received the invitation, I reminded Rose that I had been kicked upstairs to chairman last year due to old age. I thought that would mean fewer speeches. Apparently I was wrong,” she said.
Kicked upstairs is a very Robina way to describe handing the CEO post to Stanley Co in January 2025 and keeping the chairman’s seat. I’d call it a promotion with fewer meetings. Doesn’t life, with all its difficulties, get so much easier when you can laugh at your own age?
“Deposit slips”
The loudest applause of the night went to her dad. “I also thank my dad, John Gokongwei Jr., for giving me this opportunity at a time when many Chinoy women were just asked to fill out deposit slips.”
The second-loudest went to the UP Fighting Maroons, which she has long backed. “Four of the seven major supporters of the Maroons are women, and when we get together, we always like to talk not about how to win but about who the most gwapo player is.”
“The juiciest bits”
Finally, now I know where Robina gets her Marites fix. “I have also learned from friends in the industry like Rose Ong of Wilcon Depot, who taught me what I know, or maybe the juiciest bits that I should know, about retail.”
That would be Rose Bosch-Ong, the same Rose who sent the invitation and the one she had to remind about her old age. In retail, as in life, the best intel never comes from the annual report.
The other awardees were Atty. Lorna Kapunan, champion of justice and women’s rights; Maria Beatriz “Patis” Tesoro, proclaimed National Artist for Design just this September; Dr. Cristina “Nina” Lim-Yuson, President of the Girl Scouts of the Philippines; Hidilyn Diaz-Naranjo, the country’s first Olympic gold medalist; and Madame Nguyen Thi Tuyet Minh, founding chair of the ASEAN Women Entrepreneurs Network.
Six women and a room full of applause. And one billionaire who reminded everyone that kindness, like chismis, travels fastest across a dinner table.
The Babae Awards is an annual event hosted by The Women’s Business Council Philippines, Inc. (WomenBizPH), the leading voice of women in commerce in the Philippines and a primary private-sector partner of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Womenbiz serves as the lead women-led organization and focal point for women-focused initiatives during the Philippines’ ASEAN Chairship in 2026.