Former BPO exec named PAL president

MANILA, Philippines — Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) is infusing new blood into the company with the appointment of Gilbert Santa Maria as its new president and chief operating officer, ending a month-long search following the retirement of Jaime Bautista.

Santa Maria, whose appointment was approved by the PAL board of directors yesterday, is leaving his Los Angeles-based advisory firm to join the airline.

“The flag carrier matters. That’s one of the reasons I took the job,” said Santa Maria in an interview following the company’s board meeting.

Santa Maria, who has three decades of executive management and leadership experience across multiple industries in companies around the world, said his priorities would include maintaining the airline’s current quality of service as well as profitability.

“I’ve been across multiple industries so I’m not intimidated by industry change. This is day one for me. We have a lot of work to do,” he said.

Santa Maria said his appointment came as a shock for him since he has been living “on the other side of the Pacific.” “So for me this is coming home. I guess leaders from Mindanao are ‘in’ these days. I’m from Mindanao. I was born in Butuan, grew up in Cagayan de Oro,” he said.

For the last 15 years, Santa Maria was a key leader and contributor in the Philippines’ highly successful BPO industry, serving as COO of Washington DC-based BPO company IBEX Global. Before IBEX, he was COO and CFO of IQ BackOffice, a California-based finance and accounting outsourcer that was an investee company of LiveIt Investments, Ayala Corp.’s BPO holding company.

Prior to joining the BPO industry, Santa Maria helped lead a Singapore-based internet startup called Similan.com. He was also one of the youngest general managers of Pepsi Cola Products Philippines’ Manila operations.

“For a president, you don’t have to be an airline guy. You just have to know how to manage people, and then make everybody work together. So he has a good background in management. He has managed a lot of companies, foreign and local,” PAL vice chairman Lucio “Bong” Tan Jr. said.

Bong said Sant Maria was recommended by his father, the airline’s chairman tycoon Lucio Tan, and some other people.

“The chairman ordered that the new president works with the vice chairman, yours truly, and then the whole corporate governance committee, which is consisted of eight members and we added two more independent directors to beef up the whole committee. From now on, it’s going to be those three bodies that will drive PAL to move forward,” Bong said.

He said among the marching orders given to Santa Maria is to address all of PAL’s problems.

PAL executive vice president and chief administrative officer Vivienne Tan said Santa Maria’s expertise and learnings in the US is something he could bring to the country’s flag carrier.

“Actually I am very excited to have a president like that. He is from the US and he has a lot of ideas that he can do for the country. One thing that we talked about before we got him in. I asked him about coming back to the Philippines,” Vivienne said.

“It is important for my father’s vision to be translated into PAL providing consistent quality service to our customers and also, the flag carrier serving as a means to contribute to nation-building. With this new leadership, we will accomplish this further,” she said.

Santa Maria has a Master’s in Public and Private Management from the Yale University School of Management and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of the Philippines in Diliman.