About Pat
Pat is the ultimate trailblazer in embedding purpose and sustainability in organisational decision-making.
From grassroots non-profit work to becoming one of Asia’s first Chief Sustainability Officers, from transforming working with Asian family businesses to launching Asia’s first purpose & sustainability consultancy, The Purpose Business, she has consistently articulated and activated purpose, to guide leaders to evolve business as a force for good.
A master of stakeholder engagement, she is a natural connector, leveraging her global network and facilitates much needed conversations around purpose-driven transformation. Her work is focused on embedding purpose into decision-making – ultimately - governance of organisations. She brings this to every leader, every business she helps as well as to the organisations that drive change around the causes she supports - be that responsible business in general, financial literacy of migrant domestic workers, regenerative tourism, social impact & wellbeing and animal welfare.
Her early career spanned non-profits and environmental organisations where she held roles in programme management and fundraising, even ghost-writing a coffee farming book!
In her mid 20's she carved out a role for herself, serving as Ayala Land Philippines' first CSR and Sustainability Manager ,where she led many firsts including the ground-breaking approach to develop the first LEED-certified mixed- use facility just south of the capital, Manila.
This was capped with the revolutionary community empowerment approach that re-trained local residents instead of relocating them elsewhere. This paved the way for thousands of families to find new livelihood across the 2,290-hectare Nuvali mixed-use estate and premier residential communities. From landscaping to retail service, security management and biodiversity conservation, generations of workers did not have to flee the land they grew up in – and owned their homes built alongside corporate volunteers through the partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
Pat then moved to create the role of Global CSR and Sustainability Director launching a the first-ever sustainability strategy for Shangri-La, Asia’s then biggest home-grown chain of hotels and resorts.
Across 70 properties in at least 20 countries globally, she worked with the hotels' assets, projects and operations teams introducing green building design standards and sustainable food sourcing plans, as well as community empowerment programmes. She never took off her environmental hat and pursued projects with resort destinations- from coral conservation, to panda rehabilitation. She also brought the diversity she has long been fighting for and introduced inclusive workplace practices where all hotels filled 2% of their workforce with people with different abilities.
Perhaps her biggest challenge came in working beyond the hotel chain alongside industry leaders and environmental conservation groups to ban shark’s fin soup from service. With partners across airlines, cargo companies, tourism boards and environmental organisations, major hotel chains and events companies altogether made it happen: banning shark's fin from service helped shark’s fin imports drop by 50% between 2007-2017.
In 2015, Pat launched The Purpose Business (TPB) in Hong Kong, Asia’s first network model consultancy to embed purpose and sustainability in strategy and across business models.
TPB rivalled the big four accounting and management consulting firms to engage various boards of directors and executive leadership teams and orient their businesses towards wellbeing of all people and planet. TPB became a compelling partner of choice for business leaders across family conglomerates, start-ups and small-medium enterprises that operated from Asia and beyond.
Read more at www.thepurposebusiness.com
Alongside client work Pat has taken on faculty and tutor roles with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership as Senior Associate.
She teaches on CISL’s flagship offering, the Business & Sustainability Programme (BSP), which has been running for over 35 years with almost 4,000 senior executives as alumni globally. She sits on the BSP Global Steering Committee, as well as regularly contributing to Executive Education prrogrammes and online offerings including the Governance for Sustainable Leadership , Business and Sustainability Management and High Impact Leadership courses.
Pat continues to serve as advisor to several non-profits and industry groups. As Chair of the Independent Advisory Group of Travalyst, she works with esteemed experts in responsible tourism, She also works with Sowen who leverage deep data capabilities and cross-sectoral expertise to help partners design, implement, and measure sustainable, scalable impact.
Pat is a Gender Ambassador for the Asia Venture Philanthropy Network, working with business leaders to embed the inclusion lens in strategy development.
In all these roles, Pat delivers the quiet, supportive work that enable organisational leaders to embed purpose in their everyday decision-making.
