We're gathering data to create a market report: the AI Behavior Benchmark. Add your perspective to the report now: https://emergeph.com/ai-behavior-benchmark/

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In this episode, I sit down with Liz Suarez, Chief HR Officer of the Gothong Southern Group, a Philippine conglomerate spanning shipping, real estate, hospitality, supply chain logistics, and technology. Leading HR across that many lines of business is its own kind of leadership challenge, and Liz has built her entire approach around one conviction: behavior can be shaped, and anything that can be shaped can be measured.

What makes Liz's perspective distinctive is where it comes from. She did not grow up watching anyone work in corporate. Her formation came through social sciences, through over a decade in hospitality where she was trained to demonstrate empathy as a measurable skill, and through a long career of building systems that connect the everyday work people do to the values the organization actually stands for.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• Why soft skills are absolutely measurable and how hospitality trained Liz to prove it
• The difference between being personal and making it personal in a performance conversation
• Why most leadership programs skip the most important step: self-mastery before leading others
• How Liz uses the Coach Carter framework to develop coaches at every level of the Gothong Southern Group
• The feedback that changed everything: being told she came across as "Little Miss Perfect" and what she did about it
• How she trained a chatbot to be her emotional counselor and what that revealed about AI and empathy

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Liz's most practical tip for leaders who struggle to show vulnerability and what verbalizing your emotions does for the people around you!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

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We're gathering data to create a market report: the AI Behavior Benchmark. Add your perspective to the report now: https://emergeph.com/ai-behavior-benchmark/
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In this episode, I sat down with Ryan Buswell, Co-Founder of Just Press One, a people-first BPO with over 350 team members working remotely across the Philippines. Ryan moved here from the US at 25 with no local experience, no car, no apartment furniture worth mentioning, and a business that had never operated in another country. He landed on a Friday and had his first class of hires by the following Monday.

What makes Ryan's story compelling is not just the growth. It is what he chose to build around. From the beginning, remote work was not a pandemic pivot for JPO. It was the business model, designed specifically to give Filipino workers access to high-paying jobs without the two to four hour daily commute that grinds so many people down. That decision shaped everything about the culture he built.

This conversation gets into the real stuff: what it cost him to learn how to lead in a culture he did not grow up in, what it felt like to have an early employee tell him straight to his face that he was not cut out for this, and how the story of Irwina from Davao, who put her two brothers through college on her JPO salary, became the clearest answer to why any of it is worth doing.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• Why Ryan built JPO around remote work from day one and what that has meant for families across the Philippines
• What he had to unlearn about American leadership to actually connect with his team here
• The early employee who told him he was not cut out for this and why he is grateful for it
• Why replacing someone who automates their own job is the single worst use of AI possible
• How JPO makes Claude utilization visible on a weekly scorecard and what that does for culture
• The practical AI workflows Ryan uses daily as a CEO, from morning briefings to full accounting audits

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Ryan's most practical tips for senior executives who want to get started with AI but do not know where to begin!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

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In this episode, I sit down with Peter Ramolete, SVP and Managing Director of RealPage Philippines. RealPage is a global provider of software and data analytics to the real estate industry, with AI at the core of how it is transforming workflows across property management and operations worldwide.

Peter has spent over three decades in technology, from his early days as a programmer to leading entire outsourcing organizations across IBM, HP, HPE, and DXC. He has navigated big waves of change before. But when AI arrived, even he had to stop, sit with the fear, and deliberately choose a different lens before he could lead anyone else through it.

What I find most compelling about Peter is that he did not just talk about AI adoption. He went deep himself first, modeled the vulnerability, and created the conditions for his entire leadership team to learn together without pretending anyone had the answers. That is exactly the kind of leadership this moment is asking for.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• The three lenses Peter moved through on AI: doom, denial, and the deliberate choice to find opportunity
• How he used Claude to shift his own mindset in under a week before bringing the conversation to his team
• Why "human in the loop" is too passive and what "human in the lead" actually demands of leaders
• The psychological safety practice that made it okay for senior leaders to ask stupid questions together
• Why reverse mentoring on AI is one of the most important leadership moves you can make right now
• The one belief he wishes every leader in the Philippines would adopt: it is okay to not know everything

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Peter's take on the biggest gaps holding the Philippines back in AI maturity and what leaders can do about it starting now!

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In this episode, I sat down with Vanson, Former Head of People for Canva Philippines. Canva is one of the world's most widely used design platforms, and the Philippine campus became one of its most important hubs. Vanson spent six years helping shape the culture that made it work.

He spent sixteen years in HR before he ever led a team. When the role finally came, it landed mid-pandemic, the team's loyalty still belonged to his predecessor, and there was no playbook for what came next. What he built from that moment is one of the clearest examples I have seen of what intentional, connection-first leadership actually looks like at scale.

I have heard Vanson speak a few times before this conversation and he always makes me think differently. This episode was no exception.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• What the leadership shadow is and why you are casting one whether you intend to or not
• How a manager title instantly breaks psychological safety and what it takes to rebuild it every day
• The one piece of advice Mel Perkins gave Vanson in fifteen minutes that took him months to understand
• Why great cultures develop natural antibodies that make it hard for the wrong people to thrive
• Why attributes matter more than skills in hiring now, and how the talent framework is being rewritten
• Why AI is pushing people to rebuild their relationship with difficulty, and why that muscle matters most

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Vanson's closing message on what it means to schedule life like you schedule work!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

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In this episode, I sat down with Nicolas Bivero, Co-Founder of PenBrothers, one of the fastest-growing outsourcing companies in the Philippines. PenBrothers specializes in building dedicated remote teams of mid to senior level white-collar professionals for international clients, and they have been doing it for over twelve years.

Nico is half-German, half-Venezuelan, raised in South America, educated in Switzerland, and has called Manila home for fifteen years. He did not come here to build an outsourcing company. He came to explore a business opportunity for a Japanese shipping company. What he found was a workforce that changed how he thought about people, about teams, and about what it means to build something that actually lasts.

What I appreciate most about Nico is that he is a systems thinker who genuinely believes in the long game. And this conversation shows exactly what that looks like in practice, from data-driven onboarding to co-creating change with the people who have to execute it.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• How the HyperCare onboarding program moved Pen Brothers' client success rate from 50% to 86%
• Why the cultural gaps between Filipino and Western teams are real, specific, and completely bridgeable
• The long-game mindset Nico borrowed from Japanese business culture and why it changes everything
• Why co-creating change with the people who execute it is slower upfront and faster in practice
• How AI is giving their teams more time for humans, not less
• What it will actually take for the Philippines to keep its best leaders at home

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Nico's ten-year vision for what PenBrothers and the Philippines could look like!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

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In this episode, I sit down with Char, a senior people leader with deep roots in the Philippine outsourcing industry. Every senior leader and team lead in her organization started from rank and file. That is not a coincidence. It is what happens when you build a culture around one word: Malasakit.

Malasakit is a Filipino concept that does not translate cleanly into English. The closest you get is genuine, heartfelt care. And for Shara, it is not a value on a wall. It is the actual operating system of her organization, present from the first day of recruitment through every performance conversation, every difficult decision, every moment a leader has to choose between what is easy and what is right.

This is one of the most grounded conversations I have had on trust, accountability, and what compassion actually looks like when there are KPIs on the line.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• Why Malasakit, genuine heartfelt care, is the single core value her entire culture is built on
• What the Trust Battery exercise reveals about team relationships nobody talks about out loud
• The difference between empathy and compassion, and why action is what actually matters
• How being compassionate about a shift schedule turned an underperforming team member around
• Why AI is making her organization more human, not less, by freeing people for real connection
• How showing her own struggles, not hiding them, is how she develops leaders

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Shara's unconventional take on where leaders should be learning from right now!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

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In this episode, I sit down with Penny, Co-CEO of Virtua Solutions, a Philippines-based outsourcing company that builds remote support and customer success teams for US-based clients. Nine years in, they sit at a 95% employee retention rate. That number is not an accident.

Penny started as a freelancer doing cold calls. She became a remote worker, then a team builder, then a co-founder. What shaped her leadership philosophy was experiencing firsthand what it felt like to be genuinely trusted, included, and given ownership by the people she worked for. She built Virtua to give that same experience to other people.

What I love about this conversation is how honest Penny is about the bumps along the way, including a costly miscommunication that escalated into losing a client. The lessons she took from that are some of the most practical things I've heard on this show.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• What "people first" actually looks like when a client is frustrated and someone is underperforming
• How Penny learned to regulate her emotional state before walking into a difficult conversation
• Why explaining change in business terms almost never lands with the people who have to live it
• The skill versus will framework she uses before deciding how to support a struggling team member
• How modeling beats telling when it comes to developing leaders inside your organization
• Why flattening hierarchy is not about being soft, it is about getting the most out of your people

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Penny's take on why self-awareness is the number one thing every leader needs to develop first!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

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In this episode, I sit down with Mia Lim, Head of People for TALA in the Philippines and Vietnam. TALA is a leading fintech company providing financial access to underserved communities across emerging markets, and Mia is one of the people shaping what it means to build a high-performing, people-first culture inside a company moving at that speed.

What makes Mia's perspective so different is her path. She started in brand management, moved through change management consulting, and got certified as an executive coach before stepping into HR leadership. That combination gave her something most people in her role don't have: the discipline to diagnose what's really broken and the emotional intelligence to actually fix it.

Her guiding principle is one I keep coming back to. Context is your superpower. And this conversation is full of exactly that.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• Why the last mile of change almost always fails, and what actually fixes it
• How I spent her first six months at TALA on the front lines before touching a single HR framework
• What it took to recalibrate a culture where 75% of the company was rating at the top two performance levels
• The difference between empathy and compassion, and why one of them actually drives performance
• Why HR without a seat at the table is a fragile foundation that breaks under pressure
• The "why to what" shift: one word that makes people less defensive and more honest

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Mia's vision for what dignified work looks like in the Philippines as AI reshapes the workforce!

We hope you love this episode! If you do, please take time to share this with someone you think would be inspired by it!

Episode's Recommended Read

• The Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton
• Work Rules by Laszlo Bock

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Would you like to find out, for FREE, how your company stacks up against the market when it comes to AI adoption and effective AI usage?
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In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Mena Ramos, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of the Global Ultrasound Institute (GUSI), a health tech company on a mission to revolutionize patient care by training medical professionals worldwide in Point of Care Ultrasound through an AI-enabled learning platform combining virtual mentorship and tele-ultrasound.

Before GUSI, Mena was a family physician. She knew how to wear different hats in different rooms and keep the personal and professional clearly separated. Then she started building a company and that line disappeared. What she didn't expect was how much that would change her as a leader.

We talk about inner work, emotional intelligence, what it really means to lead a team as your whole self, and why epistemic humility might be the most underrated leadership skill of all.

Some of the highlights from this episode:

• How founding GUSI forced Mena to show up as a whole person, not just a professional
• Why conflict aversion disguised as optimism quietly creates the biggest team problems
• What doing inner work actually looks like when you are running a company under pressure
• Why emotions carry intelligence, and suppressing them at work costs more than you think
• The strategic case for HR in early-stage startups, and why it is as critical as finance or sales
• Why epistemic humility is the most important cross-cultural leadership skill you can develop

Make sure to stay until the end to hear Mena's full story and her thoughts on what it really takes to build trust across cultures!

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Welcome to Lead Human — a podcast for Filipino leaders rethinking how people are developed, how organizations grow, and what leadership looks like when humans come first. I'm Eli Harrell, the host of this Podcast and if you're someone building something and trying to get the people part right — this is for you. Follow the show so you don't miss it 

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