Federico B. Gimenez

FEDERICO B. GIMENEZ
Senior International Consultant on
Procurement and Project Management

This Filipino was born on October 31, 1939 in Manila, two years
before World War II started in the country. He was the second
of twelve children of a Manila doctor and his dedicated wife. He
grew up through the Japanese occupation years and
remembers only the end of the war when, as a five year old
boy, the family moved from house to house seeking refuge from
the invaders’ angry retreat from the US forces led by General
Douglas MacArthur and finally settled in Quiapo. A few years
later, the family moved to Pasay.

This Filipino started schooling at the age of five in St. Rita’s
Academy where, in two years, the sisters corrected his left-
handedness, as they considered it to be an evil trait. Thus
corrected, he went to San Beda College in 1947 until 1955 for
elementary and high school education. After graduation from
high school at the tender age of 15, he went to De La Salle

College to study Chemical Engineering, graduated with honors and placed fifth in the
government Board Examinations of 1960. Subsequently, he studied MBA at the University of the
Philippines’ Cebu campus and further studies at the Arthur D. Little Management Education
Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts.

After working two years in San Miguel Brewery’s glass factory during his college years, this
Filipino was challenged by Don Jesus Cabarrus with the charge of setting up a new glass plant in
Liloan, Cebu. Having done that, he joined Jimmy Ongpin and Caddy Dominguez in the
prestigious and competitive EEI Corporation, as Cebu Branch Manager and soon became its
General Manager for Southern Philippines. In his last employment during the three years before
migrating to a foreign land, he became Executive Vice President and CEO of a lead-based
manufacturing plant and concurrently set up a distributorship for WABCO off-highway trucks.

While in Cebu for ten years, this Filipino from Manila married a Cebuana beauty named Teresita
Sidebottom in 1963 and by 1967, the couple was blessed with four children. Today, this Filipino
and his wife are the proud grandparents of six grandchildren.

In late 1973, this Filipino and his family migrated to Canada and settled in Vancouver. During a
period of five years, they lived in the Vancouver area and also in Calgary. Being very grateful to
another Filipino-Canadian, Rolly Salvador, for giving him his first job, this Filipino asked how he
could repay him for the favor. Rolly simply replied: “whenever other Filipinos ask for your
assistance, give it to them”. This important lesson was ingrained in this Filipino’s mind and
guided his attitude and actions towards all kababayans. In December 1977, this Filipino and his
family took Canadian citizenship and he recalls that during the ceremony, the judge formally
instructed the new citizens to never forget their country of origin.

After five years in Canada and having had five jobs in the industrial sector, this Filipino was hired
by the Inter-American Development Bank as a professional and assigned for a total of ten years
in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Barbados and Bahamas; and then to its headquarters in Washington
DC as a Senior Operations Officer in he Procurement Management Division. Having fulfilled his
main ambition of giving the four children a university education, at the age of 55, this Filipino
took early retirement in early 1995 intending to dedicate his experience to working for the
benefit of the Philippines and neighboring countries in Asia.

Immediately after retirement, this desire was quickly answered as the World Bank engaged his
services as Procurement Adviser for East Asia. In this position this Filipino’s work in setting up
the capacity of the Philippines and other Asian countries, in setting up a Procurement Training
course at the prestigious Asian Institute of Management and later in five universities in China led
by the equally prestigious Tsing-Hua University; and other activities earned him a commendation
from the then president of the World Bank, Mr. James Wolfenson.

In 1997, this Filipino and his wife returned to Vancouver where the rest of his family had settled
and from where he could easily hop across the Pacific Ocean to the old country. For 18 months,
his services were engaged by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as team leader for a project
benefiting the Philippines entitled Capacity Building in Procurement. This led to the writing of an
Executive Order modernizing the procurement function. Also during that period of time, there
was a one year assignment with the US government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation as
Procurement Advisor in Honduras, to oversee the large grant given to this country and then a
similar five month assignment in Namibia, Africa. There were many other World Bank
assignments in the Philippines, China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia doing
important work in this field; writing standard bidding documents and other work for the Japan
Bank for International Cooperation; and special assignments for the World Bank in Africa,
Eastern Europe, Australia and Asia.

In 1986, when the Marcos regime came to an end, this Filipino and his wife were in Barbados.
He was in the office in mid-morning listening to radio reports of Marcos’ departure and the office
staff came in one by one to offer congratulations because everyone knew that this Canadian
citizen had the heart of a Filpino. He could not remain in the office, so he returned home to be
with his wife to share these very emotional moments and to call brothers and sisters in Manila
announcing plans to visit them ASAP. One week later, this Filipino couple was in Manila
celebrating. One brother said something to the effect that we would never know how it felt as
we were not in EDSA at the time. So, in early 2001, this Filipino was in the midst of EDSA 2, with
friends and family and, as a matter of fact, got the group photographed and published in the
foreign press, thanks to an old classmate who lived in London and had the means to do this.

In all this traveling to six of the globe’s seven different continents (except Antartica), this Filipino
and his wife always sought and found others from the old country. (The surest way to find
Filipinos was during Sunday mass.) They can attest the existence of our kababayans is the two
Americas, eastern and western Europe (e.g, Kiev, Ukraine), the Caribbean islands, Latin America
(all the way down to Chile and Argentina), African countries including Kenya, Cape Verde, Eritrea
and Ethiopia and Namibia. In seeking out Filipinos residing in distant lands, this Filipino and his
wife socialized and offered help in any way possible, while observing how our kababayans make
us proud as they continue the Philippine traditions of hard work, honesty, friendship, loyalty and
pride in our heritage.

Having acquired the citizenship of another country has enhanced this Filpino’s pride and loyalty
to the Philippines, as the positive results of his hard work have helped to improve the image of
the Filipino’s character in the world. Even if much of the Filpino language of our ancestors has
been lost in our grandchildren, this Filpino and his wife are proud of the fact that the six
grandchildren call them Lolo and Lola. Even if this Filpino resides in a foreign country, he
maintain constant contact with his brothers, sisters, nephews nieces and many, many friends,
schools and other institutions in the Philippines. As a matter of fact, other Filipinos and
foreigners know that whenever they want to eat adobo and pansit, our house is one place
where they will surely find it.

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