The founder of the Filipino-owned glossy fashion magazine, Mega, Sari Yap passed away early morning on Sept. 9, according to her family.
In a statement issued by the publication on Facebook, Yap was said to have “peacefully joined our creator at 2:07 AM today, in the presence of her family who survives her.” According to a report, Yap died of ovarian cancer.
One Mega Group was founded in 1991 after Yap finished a Master’s degree at the University of Navarre in Spain where her graduate thesis earned the distinction Sobresaliente Cum Laude.
“As a graduate student in Spain, Yap became obsessed with the idea of creating a fashion publication, spending hours creating a mock-up using cut-outs from Spanish magazines. Perhaps no coincidence at all, her masteral thesis was entitled ‘Entrepreneurship in the Mass Media,’” reads the publication’s About page.
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Speaking on a local television program in 2012, Yap detailed the hardships of building the company from scratch, including making do with a small capital and having to print the earlier copies in Hong Kong as printing press technologies for glossies had yet to arrive in the Philippines at that time.
Today the publishing group has ten titles on fashion, lifestyle, and home and design.
A graduate of the University of the Philippines’ College of Mass Communication, Yap was recognized as one of its Outstanding Alumni during its centennial anniversary in 2008.
In an interview in 2002, Yap said: “They say entrepreneurship is putting order into chaos and I like chaos! That’s where I feel most comfortable in. Entrepreneurship requires seeing many disparate things and making something out of them.”
Featured photos courtesy of Sari Yap’s Instagram page and Mega Magazine Facebook page
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