When was the last time you entered a room and felt the weight of responsibility and possibility at the same time?

As an Asia 21 fellow this year, I asked myself this as I walked into the Asia 21 Next Generation Fellows Summit this December 5 to 7 held in Manila, my first gathering as part of the 2025 cohort. I had imagined the moment for years. Back in college, I remember reading about Asia 21 Fellows who were shaping policy, building communities, and challenging systems. I followed their stories like a student studying constellations that are visible, distant, but guiding. And suddenly, there I was, no longer just looking up at the stars but meeting them, learning with them, and realizing I now shared the responsibility to shine.

The summit, organized by Asia Society Philippines and led by Natalie Ching Jorge, Doris Magsaysay Ho, and Fernando Zobel De Ayala, was a powerful reminder that leadership isn’t a title, it’s a lifelong practice of courage, humility, and service. Standing beside co-fellows I had only ever read about (including my 2025 co-fellow Filipino classmate Kenneth Abante), I felt the quiet thrill of belonging to a circle of people who still believe that change is possible, that institutions can evolve, and that communities deserve leaders who listen as much as they act.

The Asia Society website framed our selection as a recognition of courageous leadership. But for me, it felt more like an invitation: now that you are here, what will you do with this space?

Palawan: Where fellowship meets fieldwork

The question followed me all the way to Palawan for the Asia 21 travel caravan. And as if the universe wanted to insist on an answer, it sent us two Filipino Asia 21 Fellows whose journeys could fill entire books. 

Amina Swananpoel (Class of 2011), executive director of Roots of Health, has dedicated her life to reproductive rights, dignity, and women’s health in Palawan, a work that is rarely glamorous but always life-changing. Walking through their clinic and community spaces felt like stepping inside a living manifesto of compassion. Her work reminds us that development is not measured in impressive metrics but in whether people feel safer, healthier, and more human.

Then there was Quintin Pastrana (Class of 2008), someone I had long admired from afar for his clean energy advocacy and his leadership in Sabang Renewable Energy Corporation. Seeing Sabang’s microgrid in person, an award-winning model of hybrid renewable power, was grounding. Quintin didn’t just talk about climate solutions; he built one in a place where energy once meant diesel, darkness, or none at all.

Quintin and I had the chance to briefly talk about collaboration for climate solutions, a conversation that felt less like planning and more like anchoring shared values. He also mentioned something that delighted me: the capstone of Asian Institute Management MDM graduates — Carl Vincent Gapasin, Xien Palacios and Novee Nalica. Their research explores how solar panels can coexist with agriculture, a topic that mirrors the very spirit of Sabang’s hybrid systems.

Knowing about their academic work intersects with real-world energy transitions reminded me that the pipeline of Filipino climate innovators is stronger than we think. Sometimes, all they need is a platform, and mentors like Quintin who are willing to lift them into the conversation.

From Palawan to the boardroom

What do we teach in business school, really?

Two weeks before Palawan and the Summit, I stepped into another room, this time as keynote speaker at the National Business Management Conference of De La Salle University and the Philippine Academy of Management. It was a gathering of scholars, deans, researchers, and students. And in my mind, I carried the faces of farmers I work with, entrepreneurs trying to survive, and community leaders who measure success in meals fed, hectares restored, or dreams made possible.

So, I asked the room a question I ask myself often: Do we teach business to make profit, or do we teach business to make impact?

This wasn’t rhetorical. It was an invitation to rethink the systems that shape young leaders at the very beginning of their trajectories. For decades, business education has been framed around competition, market share, and bottom lines. But in a world facing climate breakdown, inequity, and fragility, what kind of leaders are we producing if we don’t anchor the curriculum in justice, sustainability, and human dignity?

In my keynote, I shared what we have been building through Varacco, ThinnkFarm, and our Smart FARM and Smart CAFE projects: that businesses can be profitable and transformative; that technology — IoT, drones, nano-biofertilizers — can be democratized for farmers; that growth can be regenerative, not extractive.

Platforms like the National Business Management Conference and PAoM matter because they create space for dialogue. They allow professors, researchers, and practitioners to ask uncomfortable questions, interrogate outdated frameworks, and co-design future-ready models. Amid the complexity of our time, these spaces remind us that business can still be a force for good, if we intentionally teach it that way.

A journey of shared purpose

Looking back, the past weeks felt like a single arc stitched across three locations: A summit hall in Manila, where young leaders gathered with clarity and conviction. A microgrid in Palawan, reminding me of what climate solutions look like when they reach the people who need them most. A conference stage in De La Salle, where I stood before academics and asked them, and myself — what kind of leaders we must nurture for the next decade. (READ: Supporting social enterprises with a purpose: Should we?)

In every space, one theme emerged: courageous leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room; it is about being the most accountable to the future. Meeting Amina re-centered me on dignity. Learning from Quintin re-energized me on climate action. Seeing the brilliance of AIM graduates like Carl, Xien, and Novee reminded me that the next generation is already experimenting with the ideas that will define the Philippines’ sustainable future. And speaking to educators and scholars challenged me to imagine a business landscape where young entrepreneurs do not have to choose between profit and purpose, because the ecosystem teaches them to integrate both.

So, what now?

I return to the question I asked at the summit: Now that you are here, what will you do with this space? For me, the answer is simple: keep building, keep convening, keep learning, and keep connecting the threads, between fellows and farmers, between energy systems and education, between research and real life.

Spaces like Asia 21, Roots of Health, Sabang’s microgrid, and the national business conference are not just events; they are reminders that progress is collaborative. That no leader moves alone. That the world is held up by communities of people quietly doing the work, even when the world is not watching. And if there is anything this season has taught me, it is this: “Hope is not a feeling. It is a practice. And courageous leadership is one of its fiercest forms.” – Rappler.com

Ariestelo Asilo is recently named an Asia 21 Next Generation Fellow 2025. He is the President and CEO of www.varacco.com and www.thinnkfarm.com which operate through social entrepreneurship selling Buy 1 Take 1 Coffee, and creating farmer-scientists in coffee production in Mindanao. Currently, he is taking his Doctorate in Sustainability at the University of the Philippines-Open University. He also has a cat named Libe which he found at the Liberica farm in Cavite. telo@varacco.com