Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala
Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, MBA 1987
Chairman & CEO, Ayala Corporation
EARLIER EUDUCATION
Harvard College, 1981
A.B., Economics
LIFELONG LESSON FROM HBS
"The ability to find solutions to challenges increases exponentially when you tackle them with a team. Success comes much more easily if you can create the right environment for a group to address issues together."
ADVICE TO STUDENTS
"Never underestimate the importance of the 'softer' management lessons you learn at HBS—the ones that revolve around working with and leading others. As your responsibilities in any organization expand, the people-related issues become increasingly important. The technical tools that seem so important when you are a student will help only up to a point."
CURRENT READING
Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje
Jaime Zobel didn't plan to start his career in the family business. However, after completing a training program at the venerable Ayala Corporation—the largest and most widely diversified conglomerate in the Philippines—and attending HBS, he accepted a short-term position at Ayala and never left. Today, Zobel embraces his role as the leader of the 173-year-old firm, where his innovative, entrepreneurial style of management has benefited both Ayala and an island nation that faces significant social and economic challenges.
At least once a year, Jaime Zobel, his brother Fernando (who shares leadership of the Ayala Corporation as its president), and a handful of brothers-in-law travel the back roads of destinations such as Tasmania, Baja Mexico, or South Africa on adventure motorcycles. "The novelist Milan Kundera said that when you're riding a motorcycle, there's no past or future, there's only the present," Zobel observes. "I agree. It's liberating to have some time when the moment at hand is all that matters. So often in business we are reflecting on the past or looking toward the future."
The past, for the Ayala Corporation, includes an impressive history
Chairman & CEO, Ayala Corporation
EARLIER EUDUCATION
Harvard College, 1981
A.B., Economics
LIFELONG LESSON FROM HBS
"The ability to find solutions to challenges increases exponentially when you tackle them with a team. Success comes much more easily if you can create the right environment for a group to address issues together."
ADVICE TO STUDENTS
"Never underestimate the importance of the 'softer' management lessons you learn at HBS—the ones that revolve around working with and leading others. As your responsibilities in any organization expand, the people-related issues become increasingly important. The technical tools that seem so important when you are a student will help only up to a point."
CURRENT READING
Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje
Jaime Zobel didn't plan to start his career in the family business. However, after completing a training program at the venerable Ayala Corporation—the largest and most widely diversified conglomerate in the Philippines—and attending HBS, he accepted a short-term position at Ayala and never left. Today, Zobel embraces his role as the leader of the 173-year-old firm, where his innovative, entrepreneurial style of management has benefited both Ayala and an island nation that faces significant social and economic challenges.
At least once a year, Jaime Zobel, his brother Fernando (who shares leadership of the Ayala Corporation as its president), and a handful of brothers-in-law travel the back roads of destinations such as Tasmania, Baja Mexico, or South Africa on adventure motorcycles. "The novelist Milan Kundera said that when you're riding a motorcycle, there's no past or future, there's only the present," Zobel observes. "I agree. It's liberating to have some time when the moment at hand is all that matters. So often in business we are reflecting on the past or looking toward the future."
The past, for the Ayala Corporation, includes an impressive history