Last January 8, ex-MBC members and current staff threw Guillermo “Bill” Luz a golden boy surprise birthday party that he definitely won’t forget. Bill did not also know that his family (wife Cory and daughter Gita) were in the secret as well.

Bill Luz was the former Executive Director of the Makati Business Club. He ran MBC for 25 years. While in MBC, he concurrently held the position as the former Secretary General of the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), a close affiliate institution.

When I joined MBC in early 2003 (and only stayed for less than a year), Bill Luz was my idol – and to work closely with him was a dream come true for me. My fascination for Bill began when my older brother Paolo became a Research Associate like myself for a little over a year.

Kuya handled the sectors of utilities and oil. He even had the great opportunity to participate in the APEC forum in 1996. My brother told the family stories about Bill and whenever I would catch him on the news, I’d report to my Kuya, “Hey, I saw your boss on TV.”  

I, on the other hand, monitored labor, human development (e.g. education, health, housing, population, poverty) and environment. I was also assigned to the Transparent and Accountable Governance (TAG) Network (predecessor of the Coalition Against Corruption) and the Philippine-Singapore Business Council. If my brother’s highlight was the APEC Forum, mine was the SARS pandemic.

Bill and my senior Research Associates instructed me to provide quick, regular updates and monitor its developments as this would in turn affect different industries such as tourism, aviation, and health/ pharmaceuticals.

Bill and I also worked in close coordination with the Department of Health Secretary then, Dr. Manuel Dayrit and his executive assistant then Dr. Anthony Golez in briefing our members and several industries on how to mitigate the effects of SARS in the Philippines. I also provided briefing papers for Bill’s speaking engagements as well on SARS with one of the Senior Research Associates guiding me.

After churning 12 to 14 hours of work a day, I felt so “burnt out” I quit MBC after the SARS pandemic began to subside for a well-deserved rest. Afterwards, I found myself in Ateneo doing fund raising work with Fr. Tito Caluag. But I guess the world is really small (thanks to Friendster, which was the leading SNS then) and I found myself still bumping into Bill. If not Bill, it was his daughter Gita who was a freshman around that time.

I also found myself encountering several members of the Luz family – I met several times his brother former Department of Education Undersecretary Miguel Luz when I was with the TAG Team to monitor procurement processes of government agencies, in several forums or conferences wherein he spoke on education, and last was when I was working with Synergeia Foundation. Recently, I got introduced to one of Bill’s sisters Nana, through the Brain Gain Network, who is involved in the IT and software industry.  

When I learned that Bill left MBC to join Ayala Foundation, it felt as if the face behind the institution which gave businessmen and corporations a venue to participate and make their voices heard by national government, bade goodbye to a life that brought him more often than not in the public’s eye.

Nonetheless, ex- or current MBC staff will always be bringing something we picked up from Bill wherever we may be. Based on our testimonials to him, Bill was very happy learning where we are and that our stints in MBC paved the way for it.

It was no secret among the MBC staff that Bill was considered a work terror (of which he was unaware of until the surprise party). Not your typical boss, Bill insisted that he be called by his first name. Bill was also wont to expletives, which really was not meant to hurt anybody at all (though the day would not be complete if we did not hear Bill say “Goddamnit!” emanating from his office).

Always in a frenzy and easily excited with so many ideas, Bill always pushed us to attain the impossible. (One thing I got from Bill is listing down ideas in a notebook. You’ll never know when these will be valuable down the line.) He regularly instilled in us the discipline of being always on our toes, being efficient at work, and to put on our “thinking caps”.

But what was really admirable about Bill is that his involvement in the Philippines’ state of affairs through MBC and NAMFREL. Honestly, it was a level that is quite unmatched. For somebody who grew-up in Canada and has Canadian citizenship, Bill still opted to go back to the Philippines to enact changes and empower his fellow countrymen.

Bill was tenacity, voracity and depth personified. He was never undaunted and he always pursued the best in everything. Moreover, Bill is also a representative of many brilliant, skilled Filipinos with global experience who just live, eat, drink and breathe passion for the Philippines.

Bill translated work in MBC as loving, discovering and improving our country by educating our fellowmen, and education meant feeding them with the information we researched and accumulated. The data would offer them details of a journey to an unheard of place which has the potential to generate revenue for “x” municipality or province via tourism or agriculture. 

Oftentimes, it was making the public aware of how policies affect different sectors and that their participation was needed to make sure that our legislators came out with laws that would not only benefit their track record but the operations of businesses and the country’s over-all economic development. Sometimes, it would be stories of people, who like Bill, challenged the status quo in delivering education, eliminating poverty, and placed the Philippines on top of the world. Be it works showcasing our craftsmanship, our culture, our sophistication or our desire to compete in the same level as developed countries.

I can only surmise why he was such a “terror” in MBC. To conveniently not act on things because of the status quo is such a lame excuse. Bill would always ask us to be innovative and creative in our approaches, in our decisions. He pushed us really hard at work and it paid off: his training stuck with us as we pursued our craft when we got out of MBC.

While this blog might have emphasized on Bill Luz, the underlying message of this is skewed towards everybody here in the Brain Gain Network: start and be your own Bill Luz, wherever you are. We are all talented Filipino professionals and we know that our work contributes to the development of our country – be it something directly or indirectly. When we study, when we work abroad, we make ourselves proud, we make our country proud.

That’s why when I think of brain drain, the Brain Gain Network negates it. Why? Because wherever we are, be it relocating, migrating to a city outside our province or in a country which is not the Philippines, we still find the ways and means to give back sooner or later. That’s an asset, an advantage, a GAIN. Not a loss. But in giving back, let it not be just a one-time, big-time thing. Nor should it just be purely altruistic. Let our contribution be something that empowers our people, our government agencies to spur the break of the status quo conveniently imposed on ourselves.