Some stories take a paragraph. Some take a career.

I’ve spent almost 30 years following wealth in the Philippines and Asia — how it’s built, how it’s lost, how it passes from one generation to the next, and what it costs the people caught in its orbit.

The Work

The Ayalas. The Sys. The Aboitizes. The Razons. The Villars. The Yuchengcos. The Ongpins. The Lucio Tans. The Lopezes. The Gokongweis. These are not just names I’ve written about — they are families I’ve followed across decades of pivots, succession battles, political entanglements, and quiet reinventions.

My current project is the authorized multimedia biography of John Gokongwei Jr. — a documentary film already delivered, a book in progress, a podcast series in production. Before that, and alongside it: deep investigative reporting on the corporate governance crisis inside the Lopez Group, published in Rappler and Esquire Philippines as an ongoing series.

Before journalism, I was a banker — packaging corporate loans and investments. That background travels with me into every story I report about deal structures, holding companies, and the financial architecture of family empires.

I have covered the industries these families control: telecommunications, energy, aviation, mining, finance, and infrastructure. Some of the most satisfying work of my career has been making these sectors legible — explaining why electricity costs so much in the Philippines (including an animated explainer that has since been used to educate lawmakers and university students), how NAIA Terminal 3 became one of the country’s most contested public-private partnership projects, how frequency auctions shape which company controls your signal, how power purchase agreements end up in your monthly bill.

I’ve led multimedia reporting teams, managed newsrooms, and produced work across print, broadcast, digital, documentary, animation, and podcast. I’ve reported from boardrooms and from the field.

For families, institutions, and companies

Some of the most important stories are the ones that haven’t been written yet — the founder who built something extraordinary and deserves a record that outlasts the headlines, the company that wants its history told with honesty and craft, the institution that needs a complex project explained to an audience that wasn’t in the room.

I take on authorized biographies, corporate histories, legacy publications, documentary projects, and long-form investigative and explanatory journalism. I work across formats, and I work at whatever depth the story requires.

Always reading

I publish Lala’s Book Notes — detailed notes on books about wealth, power, biography, tycoons, and the places they shape. It keeps me honest about the standards of the form, and occasionally, about the limits of my own assumptions.

Selected Outlets

Newsbreak · ABS-CBN · Rappler · Forbes Philippines · Esquire Philippines

Based in La Union, Philippines.

Get in touch.