By God’s grace

Executive profile:

June Cheryl “Chaye”  Cabal-Revilla, a 21-year veteran of PLDT, assumed the role of executive vice president and chief finance officer of Metro Pacific Investment Corp. (MPIC) in December last year after the departure of former CFO David Nicol.

She joined PLDT after completing her Masters in Business Administration at the Asian Institute of Management in 2000, where PLDT had already headhunted her.

Her journey to the top, however, Chaye credits more to God’s will and purpose for her rather than to her own plans.

Medicine, engineering or accounting?

Chaye recalls that in her early childhood, she was perfectly content to live as a “Bisaya,” studying grade school and high school in Cebu, and expecting to finish her higher education at the University of San Carlos.

“I have not had my life set out for me as I had planned,” she admits, recalling that initially she had already enrolled in a medical school in San Carlos, but it was eventually her sister who became a doctor.

Likewise, she had no plans to go to Manila, but it was her parents, Jun and Betty Cabal, both government officials, who encouraged her to study in the country’s capital city.

Chaye’s mother is the current mayor of Hindang municipality in Leyte, while her husband is House Deputy Speaker Strike Revilla.

Despite her political family, Chaye insists that she has no inclination whatsoever for politics. She believes that “it is God’s will because I didn’t plan it. I don’t want politics. God has a reason for everything.”

Her father, she explains, comes from a line of professionals, while from her mother’s side comes the artistic and creative inclinations.

Chaye, aside from being religious, is a member of the PLDT Choir.

Upon her parent’s prodding, Chaye applied with three different universities, with different course preferences.

She applied with the University of the Philippines for a medical degree; Ateneo for an engineering degree and De La Salle University for an accounting degree.

The accounting degree, Chaye explains, was influenced by two of her aunts who were accountants – one was working for SGV & Co., while another immigrated to the US after she was petitioned by the city of New York. However, she reiterates, “It never occurred to me to take up accounting.

She was accepted in all three universities, but the deciding factor in the end, Chaye said, was proximity to her aunt’s place in Magallanes Village in Makati City. “So that was DLSU in Taft, Manila and of course, accounting.”

Her decision to take up accounting in DLSU in 1989 she attributes to God’s plan, noting that “God has a purpose for me” and admitting that “I’m one person who never questions God’s will.”

On the job training

She completed her Bachelor of Science in Accountancy over an accelerated three years and graduated by 1992.

Her skill was immediately noticed by SGV even before she graduated and she was offered a job by the firm in 1993. She stayed with the firm for five years where she got most of her on the job training, regularly being borrowed by managing partners.

While she was there for only five years, Chaye said those five years “were equivalent to 15 dog years of working.”

She was always up for the work though, as she “couldn’t say no” and was actually volunteering for different jobs.

One challenging work, in fact, was an audit assignment in Africa. At that time, she reveals, no woman had ever been assigned to the Dark Continent.

That was also the time when there was a war and there was the dreaded Ebola disease. But she readily took on the challenge and thus became the first woman in SGV to be assigned to Africa.

Her attitude, Chaye says, is “if nobody wants it…ako na lang.”

Her courage, Chaye explains, is derived from her Bible heroine, Queen Esther who saved the Jews from genocide.

One of her favorite prayer, which she has also taught to her daughter, is “I pray for the wisdom of King Solomon, the courage of Queen Esther and the love of King David.”

While she enjoyed working with SGV, Chaye wanted “to try out something further” and decided to get her MBA from the Asian Institute of Management. Unfortunately, to do so, she had to resign from SGV.

Thus, PLDT had the chance to snatch her up and as it turns out, her decades long career in PLDT and the MVP Group began.

She learned the various aspects of the business serving as executive assistant to top managers and executives, gaining mentors, and regularly facing challenges that forced her to learn financial and even the technical aspects of the job.

She revealed that whenever faced with criticism that she was not experienced with a technical aspect, she would promptly volunteer to learn hands on, so much so that she has physically gone down a manhole and even climbed up a telephone pole.

She has served in various capacities in PLDT as senior vice president and controller from 2000 to December 2020; as treasurer of the PLDT Smart Foundation from April 2006 up to the present; CFO of Cignal from March 2013 to 2015, and then CFO of Smart from May 2015 to December 2020.

Chaye was also able to attend an executive education program in 2018 at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Words of advice

For Chaye, “nothing beats hard work. Ask God and pray for discernment for God’s purpose for you because it’s not about doing what you want, but doing what God wants you to do, otherwise you will always be a misfit if pipilitin mo yung gusto mo.”

As for challenges, Chaye’s advice is “if there are challenges, go with it, stick with the process and that will make you strong. In my mind, it’s always about perspective, I have a choice to feel bad in a certain situation or take it as a challenge, learn from it and become strong. Don’t let challenges or people defeat you. How can you be defeated if you are under God’s grace… we know the story of our life…good will always triumph over evil.”

Furthermore, Chaye believes, in “doing God’s purpose for you, that will give you joy… all the other things that you will get... titles, material things... those will go away…you will retire, houses and cars they get old, but the character, a good heart, a sound mind and a good soul will always stay with you and no matter what happens whether it be good times or bad times, you will never go wrong.”

Chaye assures that “every time you start something like a marathon or a race, there is beginning…depends on you, if you fall or you decide to quit, that’s your choice. If you stand up and decide to run again, that’s your choice. If you listen to the hecklers around you and get distracted, that’s also your choice, but if you are focused and run faster and stay your course, then you get to the finish line earlier than anybody else, and I think that is how success should be measured. You can’t have everybody root for you. Life is about choices. And the pace of when you achieve your goals is not set by people, it’s your choice.”

Breaking the glass ceiling

As part of the growing number of female executives who are finally reaching the C-suite level, Chaye insists that there should be no difference between men and women.

“We are all created equal, and from a competence perspective there is no contest. If you work hard you are in the same position as a man…from a resiliency standpoint mas resilient tayo,” she points out.

At a World Women Congress in India, Chaye recalls her speech wherein she asked “Why should we be scared when all these men came from our wombs?”

As for the so-called glass ceiling, Chaye says “women should go ahead and touch it if there is. I said the pace of your growth is really dependent on you. You can never put a good man or woman down. People will see through that. You don’t have to put yourself out. Your performance…how people value you will be there. They really will be the one trumpeting you and the output of your work.”

100 percent

Chaye does not subscribe to the idea of work-life balance.

“There is no such thing as a number and putting a 50-50. You have to be consistent across all your life your professional life. I give it all 100 percent. I give it my all as a mother, as a friend. Kasi di ka whole. You have to be whole in everything…no such thing as 20 percent dito, not possible. Everything is about perspective.”

Chaye does not like to be stressed either. “I don’t let stress stress me. It will eat you at end of the day. I don’t know how to be stressed because I refuse to be stressed. I always take things as a challenge and any difficult thing you have to go through as a process, that will end.

“Even if I work at home with my daughter, its 100 percent. It’s the quality of time, even if five minutes still much better than an hour of 10 percent when your mind and heart aren’t there.”

For her own kids, she has two – a son and a daughter – “I don’t want them to grow up with a privileged mind… that they don’t have to work. I want them to have a mindset that they have to work and fend for themselves.”

As such, Chaye does not want her kids to go through life not having to lift a hand or a finger. “I dont’ want that for them. At the end, she says, what is really more important is  the character, the mind, and the soul.”