The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award. Senate Citation to Outstanding Young Filipinos. CFO of the Year Excellence Award. Central Bank of the Philippines Stakeholder Award. CFO Innovation Asia Excellence in Business Partnering Award. BizNewsAsia Business & Real Estate Who’s Who Award. BizNewsAsia Financial Management Excellence Award. Outstanding Innovator Award. CFO of the Year Golden Globe Tiger Award for Women Leadership. CFO of the Year - Excellence Awards in Financial Planning and Analysis. Women Super Achiever Award. CFO of the Year, Excellence in Women Leadership. TheNewPH Excellence on Women Leadership. CFO of the Year at the Philippine Leadership Awards. CFO of the Year at the Asia’s CFO Excellence Awards. Asia’s Women Leaders at the Women Leadership Awards.
June Cheryl “Chaye” Cabal-Revilla (MBM 2000) is one of the country’s youngest and most decorated top finance executives. And with her conferment as an AIM Alumni Achievement (Triple A) Awardee last 2020, she has one more award up her sleeve. With her recent appointment as Executive Vice President, Chief Finance Officer, and Chief Sustainability Officer at Metro Pacific Investments Corporation, it certainly won’t be her last.
Knowing One’s Personal Purpose
Chaye Cabal-Revilla has been in finance for almost three decades. She started her career early when she finished her Bachelor of Science degree in Accountancy at only 18 years old from the De La Salle University. Fresh out of college and bearing her CPA license, she worked as a junior staff at the country’s leading and largest professional services firm SGV & Co. At AIM, not unexpectedly, she majored in Finance when she took her Master and Business Management degree from 1998 to 2000. Upon graduating from AIM, Chaye fast-tracked her career at PLDT. For 20 years she held numerous concurrent CFO and directorship positions in PLDT and its subsidiaries. In December 2020, she started a new chapter as EVP, CFO, and CSO at Metro Pacific Investments Corporation.
Breaking the Status Quo
Chaye is an innovator with a digital mindset. She asserted that finance must serve as an innovation catalyst and championed the digital transformation of the country's leading telecommunications company amid an evolving technology and innovation landscape.
As Senior Vice President and Controller of PLDT, Chaye spearheaded projects that digitized the group's finance and operations while ensuring a profitable balance between operational costs and quality of service. She also rolled out automated systems that streamlined processes and significantly lowered operational costs, resulting in the company's healthy margins and strong balance sheet. A massive accomplishment, given the wave of challenges that hit the telecommunications industry not only in the Philippines but also all over the world at the time.
But she didn’t stop there. In 2017, with Chaye taking the helm, another round of changes began in terms of finance transformation. PLDT and Smart became the first companies in the Philippines to implement new finance systems (ANAPlan and SAP HANA) that allowed accurate group financials to be available in real-time across the organization–data and analytics that impact key operational decisions by top management.
In 2018, Chaye also spearheaded a project to integrate the various functions of multiple cards into a 15-in-1 Super ID card, powered by PLDT’s fintech arm PayMaya. Primarily the company ID of PLDT employees, the EMV-chip-embedded, RFID-equipped Super ID Card also serves as a digital wallet to shop online, send money, sell prepaid services, redeem loyalty and rewards points, make ATM transactions, avail health benefits, pay travel expenses, and settle bills.
Chaye has been vital to the success of PLDT and Smart in 2018. As CFO, Chaye navigated Smart into its milestone year with a 7% rise in revenues to ₱62.5 billion. This immense upswing led to PLDT’s Consolidated Service Revenues growth of 2% year-on-year to ₱145.8 billion, the first time the group posted overall revenue growth since 2014. In this same year, network investments were heavily sustained and capital expenditures reached record highs at ₱58.5 billion.
On top of it all, Chaye has a track record of steering challenged companies (PLDT-PhilCom Group, Cignal TV, Smart Communications) from financial volatility to stability–a mark of a high-caliber CFO.
Being a Blessing to Other People
Arguably, Chaye’s most noteworthy initiative may be spearheading Gabay Guro, the flagship advocacy program of the PLDT-Smart Foundation that provides teachers opportunities for livelihood, professional growth and sustainability, and improvement of educational facilities.
Under Gabay Guro, 43,000 teachers have attended various training programs, 3,000 students have received scholarship grants, 680 have passed the Licensure Examination for teachers, and 47 classrooms have been donated nationwide.
The success of Gabay Guro under Chaye’s leadership is evident in the overwhelming support it receives from local and international donors and the several recognitions it received from different industries.
Chaye empowered leaders in the PLDT Group by helping launch and implement the PLDT and AIM Management Development Program from 2015 to 2017. She empowers women with her ready-to-wear clothing brand The Flower Collection that provides jobs to single mothers. She empowers indigenous and rural communities with livelihood programs. And ever the innovator, Chaye empowers budding technology entrepreneurs through IdeaSpace, the longest-running non-profit organization that advocates technopreneurship as the means to nation building.
She has achieved so much so quickly and to the benefit of many.
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