Young German-Filipina executive Michelle Ongpin tries to be at ease before the camera. Despite the fact that her British-Filipino boyfriend, Frank Callahan, a professional photographer, is behind the lens, she is uncomfortable about posing for publicity.

Suddenly her mobile rings. She is more nervous than ever. It’s Dad. Put it another way. Billionaire and former Cabinet minister, Roberto V. Ongpin, is calling his special assistant.

Michelle, 30, has been working for two years now as assistant to the chair and is the senior vice president for corporate communications.

“I’m the go-between for him and the officers of companies,” she explains.

Ongpin’s businesses cover real estate, IT and online gaming, mining and banking. He is also chair  of ISM Communications, the holding company for Acentic (in-room entertainment, video-on-demand) and PBCom bank.

Alphaland Corp., the real-estate firm, is the fastest growing, posting a net income of P1.25 billion last year from land appreciation.

PhilWeb, the largest technology gaming firm, made it to Forbes Asia’s list of companies earning under a billion dollars. Its revenues posted P1.04 billion last year.

Spreading the word

Michelle explains her job, “Sometimes my father communicates the vision and everyone doesn’t necessarily understand it. My role is to make sure it gets implemented. It’s easier to approach me than him. He’s traveling in Europe and he doesn’t have time. I make sure people get the information to and from him and to conduct what he wants.”

Michelle is at the helm of spreading the word: Alphaland Corp. is bullish about its developments.

The City Club, to be part of its residential condominium development, has sold some 400 membership shares. The cost jacked up from half a million to P1 million. Alphaland Makati Place’s twin-tower condo will be launched Sept. 8.

Soon the company will launch Alphaland Makati Tower for offices, and Balesin, the for-members-only island development, the country’s version of Fantasy Island.

“Every project is unique. It offers things that have not been done before,” Michelle declares.

Closer to heart, she runs the CSR projects, the biggest of which is the Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation which has fielded a hundred scholars to Ateneo High Schools all over the country.

Girl with Western ideas

Being the COO (as in child of owner) has its challenges.

“I’ve learned how to manage people with different personalities; how to swallow my pride when there are critiques and feedback. That’s not comfortable, but that’s the only way to learn. It’s also been harder for me. I’m young and the daughter of the chair. I’m a girl with Western ideas. But now we’re all working really well together.” says Michelle.

It helped that Michelle grew up independently and easily adapted to different circumstances.

She is the third of four children, ages 19-48, who all have different mothers. The eldest, Stephen is an art dealer in London; Anna, a management consultant, lives in Connecticut; Julian is a student in Australia.

Michelle notes, not without mirth, that except for the eldest, they all have the trademark square jaw of the Ongpins.

Michelle was born in Cologne, Germany. After her mother Anna Schorer and her father split when she was 3 years old, she grew up in Salzburg, Austria. At 6 years old, she would be flying across the continents to meet up with her father.

Like most teens in Europe, she led a well-traveled life. At 15, she took up internship at South China Morning Post where her father was deputy chair.

“The press conferences were conducted in Cantonese and were summarized in English,” Michelle recalls.

German tabloid

However, the rest of her internships came from her own endeavor. At The Bild, Germany’s largest tabloid, Michelle, then 16, wrote an investigative story of toxic waste disposals in a residential area, which made it to the front page.

After high school, she studied Italian in Perugia. She also enjoyed her adventures as a backpacker, such as sleeping on the beach instead of a hotel for two weeks in the Canary Islands and riding trains and buses in India where drowsy passengers accidentally slept on her shoulder.

She also experienced discrimination in male-dominated society like Morocco where locals refused to acknowledge her. “They spoke to my then-boyfriend even as I translated in French.”

Michelle has a masters in communication science (there’s no bachelor degree in Austria) at the University of Vienna and a postgraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies at Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.

Her first job was as researcher in ExCeL London, the international exhibition and convention center, where she researched and wrote speeches for the managing director.

Deep inside, she longed for NGO work. In Austria, she had served refugee children, the homeless, and worked for Caritas. In China, she took a job with the Kerry Group Kuok Foundation as project director and tried to learn Mandarin. Then the foundation had offered to set up a CSR program for the Shangri-La hotels but she would have to wait for a year.

Meanwhile, her father invited her to try out the Philippines while waiting for the CSR program to be established. Alphaland Southgate Tower had just opened.

Visionary

She admires her father for being a visionary. “He wants to make things happen. If he wants it, he will get it. He doesn’t go with the convention,” she says. “My father believes in the Philippines. He believes it can go so far. He wants to help on the business side”

After the Marcos regime where Ongpin was trade minister, he set up AIA Capital in Hong Kong. In 1990, Ongpin founded Belle Corporation which built Tagaytay Highlands when the concept of a golf course, club facilities and residential community was unheard of.

After leaving Belle Corp., he ventured into mining (Atok Big Wedge Company) and IT gaming. PhilWeb is a software provider for online gaming in internet cafés. Plans are afoot to expand in Guam and Timorleste.

One day while passing along Edsa, the older Ongpin and investors saw the dilapidated building in Makati before the ramp to South Luzon Expressway. He and his partners, Ashmore Group, the UK-based investment company, thought it would be a good idea to build a modern edifice that showed where the Philippines was heading.

“In the car, they decided to start a real-estate company called Alphaland,” says Michelle.

The Alphaland Southgate Tower rose in 2009. Today it posts 90-percent occupancy in both retail and office spaces. The company will launch Alphaland Makati Place, a one-hectare property across the Makati Fire Station along Ayala Avenue Extension, which consists of two residential towers, six-story for unique shops and restaurants, fully automated and generously spaced units (a one-bedroom unit is 63 sq m, while a premium two-bedroom condo is 120 sqm) with complete appliances and membership in the City Club.

This facility consists of three floors of children’s area, deluxe sports and wellness facilities, and function rooms. The turnover is on 2015.

In the central business district, the Alphaland Makati Tower will be a 34-story tower of high-end office space, with a penthouse and roof garden and lounges. Both properties have earned the nod of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.

Balesin Island Club in Quezon is a members-only resort community which consists of theme villages that replicate the lifestyles of the best beaches in the world.

Flown in by a private aircraft, members can spend 14 complimentary nights a year in any of the villas and commune with nature. “There are no cars, just golf carts, horses and bikes,” says Michelle.

Aside from the white sandy beaches, the Boracay Gateway Country Club in Aklan holds vacation estates with Filipino colonial homes amid the forests and an all-weather polo field. It will be completed by 2013.

Next year, Alphaland will launch Bay City, a 32-hectare high-end seaside community in Pasay City.

“Abroad, the marina is prime property, not in Manila. We want to change that thinking. We want to show how wonderful it is to live by the water,” says Michelle.

The Marina Club will provide yatch for its members. “You don’t have to own a boat to be a member. We’re going to give the boat to you. A member gets a certain amount of hours on the yatch,” says Michelle.

“All the projects will get away from the formula and raise the bar. We try to put everything into the project you would ever want or wish for.”

Scholars

All this project information goes through corporate communications department which was set up upon her entry to the company. The job is a far cry though from her college course which focused on media politics. Still, Michelle enjoys her work because it’s got heart.

With Ongpin’s quiet generosity, the number of JVO Foundation’s scholars increased from eight to 100. Aside from full tuition, books and school supplies, the scholars can do on-the-job training with the companies.

Michelle says Ongpin and his brother, Jaime, also received scholarships for the Ateneo because they didn’t have the means. To this day, her father still doesn’t know who paid for his schooling.

“He believed that he wouldn’t be where he is now if he didn’t get the Ateneo education. He wants to give back.”

Says Michelle, “I’m happiest if I can do something for people. I don’t necessarily need to do that in an NGO. I can be more effective in the corporate world.”