In a day and age when “virtual” friends are as important as the “live” ones you have coffee with once a week, creating the appropriate online persona and cultivating a fruitful online social network become imperative. Gone are the days when colleagues and clients have no clue about our lives outside work and about how we spend our weekends. These days, everyone knows what everyone else does, eats, wears, loves and hates.

Carissa Villacorta is a Filipina who has been residing in New York for seven years. She is the author of Surreality (UST Publishing House, 2006). In 2007, at 28 years old, Carissa was named 1 of the 100 Most Influential Filipinas in the States. She has made many dreams come true -hers and others'. Part of her being a "Fairy Godmother" is to write and share her articles with the Brain Gain Network - and this is one of the many to come.