The Philippines Partnership for Sustainable Agriculture (PPSA) welcomes its Country Director, Ma. Angela Primitiva Bautista. In her new role, Angel will manage the overall execution of PPSA’s strategic vision — supporting the development of sustainable and inclusive agricultural development in the Philippines. Angel will also be responsible for ensuring the effectiveness of PPSA's Working Groups and successful implementation of the grant and impact fund projects.
Welcome to the Grow Asia Network, Angel! Can you tell us about yourself and your professional experience?
In the past 30 years, my work has been around food, agriculture, nutrition, and rural development. With my engagements, I have built expertise on human resource management, corporate affairs, government relations, and Communications,
I have always had the heart for rural communities. I feel for the farmers who have been growing our food and over time, I realized that the direction I am taking is towards helping them live better lives and facilitating partnerships that will deliver win-win results and impact.
I would like to believe that my strength is in enabling results. In my previous roles, I engaged with a lot of people from different backgrounds and my passion lies in inspiring more and more of our partners to work together to achieve our shared goals. I enjoy looking at various interests and motivations and finding out common grounds that will lead us to work harmoniously as a team. This is critical for the success of multi-stakeholder collaborations.
At Nestlé Philippines, I was the Pillar Lead of the Nescafé Plan and supported in developing and implementing critical programs that were designed to help smallholder farmers and green coffee suppliers. My aim is to bring my experience in engaging at the community and farmer levels in succeeding in my role as PPSA’s Country Director.
What are your priorities for the first 100 days as the PPSA Country Director?
Beyond the time to be spent with the onboarding process and familiarizing myself with our internal teams, structures, processes, and projects, I will spend my first 100 days seeking formal partnerships and accreditations with the Department of Agriculture and other relevant government agencies. Since PPSA is a network builder and enabler, I will also take the time to meet PPSA’s members and key partners and discuss with them how we can further maximize PPSA’s network and expertise in achieving our shared goals. I will use all the insights I will get from these engagements to plan PPSA’s activities in the coming years.
What changes would you like to see in PPSA’s agriculture sector in five years’ time?
In the next five years, I hope to witness positive changes coming from the efforts and support provided to farmers and fisherfolks. I hope to see further integration and complementation, and less silos towards meaningfully supporting our food producers and ensuring food availability and safety. In five years time, I hope key players in the different agricultural industries will be involved in efficient and sustainable collaborations, all with food producers in mind and heart.
What excites you most about joining the PPSA and the Grow Asia network?
I am excited to meet and work with diverse groups of people. This will definitely come with a lot of new challenges, but a lot of lessons to be learned too. I am also thrilled to meet new farming communities as I am passionate about helping farmers and nurturing relationships with them. My vision is for individual smallholder farmers and groups of farmers to be transformed into agripreneurs/agri-businesses thus eventually transforming the agri sector in the PH.
Angel can be reached at angel@ppsa-ph.org. To learn more about the PPSA, visit www.ppsa-ph.org
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