Dimensions in East ASEAN Development

Here is a profile of a woman achiever featured in the East ASEAN Dimensions Vol. 4 No.10 by Emmanuel “Willie” Rola.
The Woman Behind.
Her fresh gut of enterprising air is all over Davao.
She made for herself a pair of wings to fly high. After graduate school, Syvelyn "Bing"Tan, was a rising young technocrat focusing on such sensitive concerns as trade and investments.
Public recognition came years later in 1989 when her endearing qualities as a government functionary won for her cap a national color as a TOYM awardee sharing the limelight with Broadway star Lea Salonga and music artist Joey Ayala during the awards night at the Malacanang Palace. TOYM awards are given to outstanding young men and women below 40 years old who excel in their respective specialization. Ms. Tan, who was then the regional director of the Department of Trade and Industry in southern Mindanao and the nominee of the Davaoena "Daba-Daba" Jaycees, was chosen for her outstanding government service.
Among executives and government economic planners, her name ("Bing" to close friends and associates) is as popular as Davao's famous orchid. The ubiquitous Bing dreams as a highly motivated Davaoena; feels, thinks, and acts like one and just as loyal to Davao as the biblical Ruth in the Book of Job to her spouse.
"I love Davao," she said. What is it that motivates or inspires this woman executive from Leyte? Nobody can tell even her closes allies. Jesus "Chito" V. Ayala, chair of the Regional Development Council, or Davao city mayor Rodrigo Duterte. They cannot but admire the "contagious workaholic Bing Tan," who can pass for a hard good Atkinson subject for the furtherance of motivational theories.
"It's quite difficult to make assumptions on Bing's source of inspiration but the enthusiasm prevailing in the RDC, for instance, is certainly very inspiring. I, too, draw inspiration from all the members who rallied behind us all the way," Ayala said.
Development strategies, just as Ms. Tan claims, point to the lawyer-entrepreneur and RDC head as "the impelling father" to the region's development initiatives. Returns come as "psychic income." Among those rare breed of men who have a strong vision for Southern Mindanao, particularly Davao, is Mr. Ayala who was at the forefront in preparing the "bible" for the region's development, called Regional Accelerated Program for Investment and Development or RAPID.
"But it must be the vision of the region and Davao City that has inspired Bing to keep on moving," Ayala said.
Mayor Duterte, on ther other hand, casually refers to Bing Tan as "the woman behind the Invest in Davao project." She is "the guy we can't do without," to the city councilors actively involved in the IID project that aims to attract domestic and foreign investors to Davao through investment promotion.
A progeny of a traditional Filipino family whose legacy is good education, Tan graduated cum laude from the prestigious Silliman University. She finished her masters degree in business management at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), internationally noted as Asia's most respected management graduate school.
She recalls: "My father used to remind us of the importance of good education, a legacy he can leave his ten children. He taught us to be strong and independent, so that, no matter what happens or when the going is real tough, we can stand on our own without having to lean on other's shoulders."
AIM was definitely not her last stop. The last quarter of 1979 saw her in Bedfordshire, England, attending a continuing study for managers' program on the promotion of small-scale enterprises in developing countries at the Cranfield School of Management. The years that followed were jetty: Jakarta, for a study on the delivery of consultancy services sponsored by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific; Japan, for the study meeting on regional industrialization sponsored by the Asian Productivity Organization; West Germany, for a study on West German Industrialization and decentralization under the auspices of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany; Italy, as the Philippines' representative to the International Coffee Conference and the 42nd Fierra Internationale de Trieste; and winding up two years after her appointment as regional DTI director in 1989, with a one-month study tour on US-ASEAN as Trade Partners sponsored by the United States Information Agency.As can be gleaned from these beads of exposures, Tan has a digital brain that defies space and time. "I seem not to have the time to stop and the luxury of waiting. I want things done without wasting any precious time," Tan said without a glaring shade of complaint.
Homegrown journalist Edith Regalado, who writes for the Philippine Star, describes ms. Tan as one who "oozes with creativity and enthusiasm; her being always on the move is one apparent characteristic that sets her from the rest of the crowd."
"Grabe kaayo si ma'am Bing. Para sa iya, walo ka adlaw ang usa ka simana," (Ma'am Bing is terrible. Her week consists of eight days), enthused Allan Cero, PITO-P staff legman.
Another workaholic, who probably was contaminated by Ms. Tan, is her former assistant, Christine Rizardo. "Looking for a challenge" Work-with-Bing-Tan," she said in a staccato pace to stress her point.
Lawyer Wendel Avisado, a former regional director of the local government and interior department here said of Tan: " In her desire to really get things moving, she pushes real hard. She wants things happen. She does what she says. That's Bing Tan."
Which is why all the projects that she initiated sustained significant success to the end. To her credit as DTI director was the highly ambitious Mindanao World Bound project that "virtually placed Davao in the business and investment mal."
"She's a good public manager and very professional, particularly with his dealings with diplomats, businessmen, local and national officials, and the RDC," Ayala attested.
To date, Tan's fertile mind is preoccupied with one of Mayor Duterte's pet "Invest in Davao" project. Just off the murder board, ready for mid-November is another equally ambitious project under the auspices of the Philippine Exports Confederation (PhilExport) of southern Mindanao: the East ASEAN Business Convention and Exhibits (EABCE), Mindanao's first international trade convention geared toward "reviving, strengthening, and increasing trade and investments" linkages in the (south) East Asean areas."
The latter is no small deal. Big or small does not seem to make any difference for the "high-caliber-working girl." Says one yuppie colleague, "When Bing dreams of small things, it does not end up there. She tried to have it nurtured and come out with very real accomplishment. That's normally you don't normally see in a person, or a woman for that matter."
Needles to be empirical of what stuff this woman is mede of, a glance of her childhood and the people who greatly influenced her life could reveal, perhaps, a part of her.
She could be cheeky. bing recalls: : "If I wanted anything from my parents, kahit anoman 'yon ay kailangan mapasa-akin, by all reasonable means. I had to work hard for it 'till I get it."
Of the people she claims to have influences o her life, besides her father, were her professors that included former trade and industry secretary Peter Garrucho, former secretaries Roberto Ongpin and Joe Concepcion, Undersecretary Cef Follosco, who were her bosses at the DTI, and former senator Vicente Paterno.
"When senator Paterno was the secretary of the industries department, I joined the agency's youth program that emphasized the need to harness the idealism and creativity of the youth. The program involved the top ten percent of my class into rural and small enterprise development. That led me to a career with the DTI in July 1976."
"Since then I came to realize the value of public service. Everything that I am now is because of the many realities that I've seen in life. The sight of dismal poverty in the rural areas keeps recurring in my mind every time I initiate a project. Since then, I came to realize the value of public service."
Her fresh gut of enterprising air is all over Davao. She broke loose the walls that traditionally limit women from rsing to a pedestal built only for men. But that's another story.