Mary Buenaventura-Kim: A True Epitome Of A CEO Goddess
Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
In this day and age, any woman can be her company’s CEO or Lady Boss. After all, women have really come a long way and have been dominating a man’s world for years since surviving the ice-age days! It’s a lot easier nowadays for any woman to put up a small company and label herself as a CEO. However, NOT EVERY WOMAN CEO IS A HIGH-VALUE CEO. Yes, I’m so aware that I wrote those words in all capital letters, but I do have a valid reason for what I’m trying to point out. Hear me out, please.
It takes a lot more than owning a company to become a really powerful woman CEO — which is, by the way, the same case for a male CEO. Such a prestigious job title comes with an enormous responsibility. It takes a lot more to be a real lady boss (or a male boss). What I’m trying to point out so clearly is this: before we get too ahead in labelling ourselves as CEO and Presidents of our companies, we have to make sure that the company we’re running must at least net a minimum of $750,000 into our small business owner’s pocket (not including taxes).
If our small business can consistently make that kind of revenue per year for many years and we can manage to invest and save at least 50% a year, then we can create massive wealth, and that eventually certifies us as real powerful and high-value women CEOs. If we’re running a company and leading, supervising, managing, delegating, and employing at least 50-100 employees — then that makes us legit high-value women CEOs. No, correction, that makes us the true epitome of CEO GODDESSES!
Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
However, it takes more than high net revenue and a number of employees to be called a high-value lady CEO. A research conducted by Korn Ferry with 57 women CEOs shows that the true defining traits and characteristics of a highly successful lady CEO are: courage, risk-taking, resilience, agility, and managing ambiguity. On top of these, a real high-value CEO also knows that being productive is better than being busy. They must have a great sense of financial markets and excellent public relations skills.
Thus, it takes someone like Mary Buenaventura-Kim to be called a legit CEO Goddess! Let’s get to know more about this CEO Goddess and how she has shattered the corporate glass ceiling!
Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
I’ve known Filipina-Canadian Mary Buenaventura-Kim since she was a go-getter teenager and she happens to be my youngest sister, Monique’s best friend — they both went to International School in Manila (ISM). Little did I know that this spunky teenager will become one of the Philippines’ top women CEOs of all time. I’m really in awe and still trying to wrap my head around how this unassuming and extremely humble teenager became a fierce and successful high-value legit lady CEO so I decided to learn more about her.
Mary Buenaventura-Kim’s real education started in her family’s grocery store. She was raised by a single mom who supported her entire family. Mary’s mom owned several chains of supermarkets in the south of the Philippines, well before the big giants entered the market. At a very young age, while her classmates were planning their holidays abroad, Mary was either in a small corner of their store office, counting cash to be deposited in the bank the next morning, or bagging groceries for customers.
At the age of 18, Mary’s first project was to spearhead the point-of-sale automated system to cut down on pilferage and pricing errors. Mary would stay up late at night to encode every single barcode into the system. Therefore, Christmas was never really fun for her, and it was only after she reached maturity that she realised all the Christmases and holidays sacrificed gave her the opportunity to receive a great education. And on top of that, she learned a wisdom that no prestigious university could ever give her.
Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
Mary graduated from Boston University with an economics degree. Since BU, as it is commonly known, has one of the best college of arts and communications departments in the United States, Mary was fortunate enough to take advertising and marketing classes as some of her electives for her degree. Upon graduating from BU, Mary decided to stay for two more years in Boston, where she worked at a consulting firm.
It was in the year 2000 that Mary decided to return to Manila. There, she entered the marketing communications world, starting in public relations by joining Burson-Marsteller as a business unit director. Mary divulges, “I started in Public Relations and my mentor was Angel Limgenco who was the CEO of the local affiliate of Burson-Marsteller in the Philippines. She mentored me in client servicing and the importance of corporate communications.”
Later on, Mary moved into advertising as an account director at Basic Advertising (a part of Publicis). Barely a year into Mary’s role at Basic Advertising, Mary’s boss at that time — Chiqui Lara, who was the vice-chairman of Basic Advertising — invited Mary to join her in rebuilding the Young and Rubicam Marketing Communications Company (Y&R). Mary’s task was to establish the agency’s in-house integrated marketing communications capabilities, which was the very first for the Y&R network in Asia. Mary then became the chief operating officer (COO) at Y&R and stayed in that position for some 10 years. Then, after Chiqui decided to step down, Mary was appointed as CEO.
Throughout this time, Mary gained a fruitful 13 years of experience in the world of creative agencies. Mary has fond memories of being also mentored by Chiqui. Mary elaborates, “Chiqui Lara was my boss and my mentor for 13 years when I entered mainstream advertising where she allowed me to grow and hone my entrepreneurial skills and creativity at Young & Rubicam. I flourished under her wings from Account Director, Division Director, Chief Operating Officer, and to CEO until I decided to move to Omnicom Media Group in 2015 as the group President [and] CEO.”
Mary with the beautiful Wonder Woman in her life: her mom. Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
Another great source of mentorship comes from the guidance of her entrepreneurial mom, Mrs. Lulu Buenaventura. Mary learned at a young age from her mother that sacrifice, dedication, love for family, and treating people with kindness are the values that she should always live by and these exact values are what brought her to where she is now.
Today, her lifelong values put Mary in the top position as the CEO and President of Omnicom Media Group Philippines — one of the leading marketing communications companies in the Philippines. Omnicom Media Group (OMG) Philippines handles top advertising clients such as McDonald’s Philippines, Unilab Philippines, Alaska Milk Corporation, SM Store and SM Affiliates, Lazada, Procter & Gamble, Google, Nissan, and many other top brands from various industries.
OMG Philippines is part of the successful worldwide Omnicom Media Group (OMG), the media services division of Ommnicom Group Inc. — a global advertising, marketing and corporate communications company that offers services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.
With Mary’s astounding leadership and fearlessness, OMD Philippines, one of the media brands of Omnicom Media Group Philippines that Mary runs, faced the Coronavirus global challenge head-on and started a cultural revolution, thus earning its rightful spot as 2020’s Gold Winner in Campaign Asia’s Philippines Media Agency Of The Year. Mary Buenaventura-Kim’s strong guidance kept the team formidable amidst the pandemic.
Under the helm of Mary, OMD Philippines has gained a new business balance of 78%, with 91% client portfolio growth since 2017, according to an article by Adobo Magazine. The report stated that OMD Philippines “also took the top spot through a notable three-year-growth of 167% in terms of digital and diversified services since 2015, while keeping its share of non-traditional compitches activity at 45%.”
Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
Every successful CEO Goddess has secrets as to why they are successful in what they do. And Mary is no exception. She shares, “I consider myself a success when my company and the people that work with me thrive. What helped me succeed is being surrounded by people who had the same passion, values, and ethics. It was also highly important to have people with diverse talents who were willing to work together as a team. I developed my strong leadership skills through experience and by learning from others. Here are my tried and tested Secrets to Success: BE HUMBLE; work hard as if failure is not an option. If you fail, try again until you succeed; Learn to LISTEN EXTREMELY WELL; and lastly, always be grateful!” We all know that not everything is rosy when it comes to running a business. When it comes to overcoming tough times, Mary says, “Prayers and FAITH help me through my worst moments and help me persevere through tough and challenging times.”
Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
Mary’s journey to success also comes with mistakes and those are inevitable, but she did not let her mistakes hinder her, saying, “I used to just love my job and didn’t pay much attention to my worth as a talent. Because of such mistakes, I learned to value my talent and the positive aspects I bring to the table. To borrow a quote by American college football player and coach, Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant, ‘When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.’ If we’re not making any mistakes, then we’re actually not doing anything to improve in our lives. I believe that a person who is a go-getter and a doer actually often makes mistakes in their lives but they learn and grow from their failures.”
In her years of running a successful advertising company, Mary also has had a lot of memorable experiences at work and she’s delighted to share one of her projects that stands out the most and that she’s most proud of. Mary shares, “Working alongside Margot Torres for the Ingat Angat Campaign was definitely one of many projects that stands out and I’m most proud of. It was a pro bono work during the pandemic to promote safety against covid and the INGAT ANGAT BAKUNA LAHAT campaign was geared to promote vaccination. This project gave us a chance to serve the nation during difficult times. It was definitely a fulfilling project.”
There are so many things that Mary loves about her job. Mary says, “I love being surrounded by energetic, creative, and driven individuals. The creativity created through insights from data analytics to connect to consumers is truly exciting for me. My job allows me to constantly innovate the business and more importantly, innovate myself.”
Mary with her true inspiration in life: her family. Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
When it comes to looking for inspiration from other leaders, I asked Mary whose career inspires her and why. Has she drawn professional inspiration from other women? Is there a particular woman colleague who has inspired her? Mary answers, “No one in particular comes to mind except for my Mom and my mentors, Chiqui Lara and Angel Limgenco. In general, I get inspiration from all the women in my industry, my clients, and even from women outside my advertising industry — I find that there are also many great businesswomen leaders from other industries who inspire me. I believe that other women CEOs possess diverse talents that we can all learn from and draw inspiration from.”
I had to ask this CEO Goddess what she thinks about the idea of companies benefiting from having more women and the LGBTQ community at the top positions and why this is such an important matter every company must address. Mary answers, “I strongly feel that it’s important to have diversity in companies. In our advertising industry in the Philippines, it is highly skewed towards women, but in recent years, we are actually starting to see positive changes and we are starting to see a shift towards more balanced and diversity with more women, men, and dear friends from the LGBTQ community having top positions in companies — that’s a really good and positive shift to have.”
At her fairy tale wedding to Kim Moo Hyung. Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
On top of being a high-value woman CEO, Mary is also a loving wife to her husband, her very own Korean Prince Charming Kim Moo Hyung, and a devoted mother to adorable Kimchee.
With regard to balancing her personal life with her high-profile career and passions, Mary shares, “It is actually difficult to find a balance in our industry, but I always remind myself that I MUST make a conscious effort at all times. At the end of the day, there’s more to life than a career — there’s family life which is so important for me. Personally, I find that living a balanced lifestyle is only possible if you really plan well and accordingly.”
The super cute and adorable Kimchee, Mary and Kim Moo Hyung’s unico hijo. Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
This highly successful CEO Goddess confessed that if she wasn’t a CEO, there’s another career that she would be interested in exploring. Mary says, “Someday, I would want to own and run a primary and secondary private school. I think that’s something I could see doing to reinvent myself later on in life.”
What are her next immediate goals in life? Mary responds, “I want to be able to do a good job playing the role of a mother. I am 48 and I have a 3-year-old toddler. I want to be able to teach him good values and rear him to be happy and kind.”
When it comes to relaxing and unwinding from her challenging career, Mary says, “I love to travel. It relaxes me and also inspires me.”
Mary with her strength and stay — her two favourite boys in her life — her husband and her son. Photo courtesy of Mary Buenaventura-Kim.
Mary is also extremely generous with sharing advice with young women who are still trying to climb up the corporate ladder. Mary encourages young women out there to, “Be passionate. Stay humble. Perseverance will get you to your goal but humility with success will take you to the next level.”
Mary Buenaventura-Kim has definitely set the standard so high for women CEOs. She embodies the eight important traits a true CEO Goddess possesses: Adaptability, Perseverance, Strength, The Ability To Create Women-Empowered Workplaces, Having Grit, Tenacity, Knowing How To Ask, and last but not the least, Knowing How To Ignore Bad Advice. Job well done, Ms. Buenaventura-Kim for being a CEO Goddess, a devoted wife, mother, and daughter — may your tribe increase a thousandfold!
