Rowell Del Fierro
Former Country Manager of MasterCardFormer President, South and SouthEast Asia, Global Payments IncCEO and Founder of PurposeFoods Inc
“I have known, worked, and been having ongoing conversations with Lou over the last 20 or years. She is a person I trust.
Professionally, her achievements speak loud of what she is made and capable of. Truly inspiring, to women and men alike. She has the rare combination of leadership charisma, commercial acumen, creativity and demonstrated ability to win. It is remarkable to me how she beats the odds, regardless of the cards she's dealt with. You just know each pitch is a winner, regardless of the outcome. She is gifted with impeccable instincts and a strategic mind. She demands the highest of standards but there is no work she supervises that she herself would not be proud to do. She builds highly successful, empowered, enabled, resilient and inspired organizations.
In the way I know her, Lou's leadership is shaped by who she is. She is as authentic as it gets and fearlessly honest. Lou is ambitious, purposeful, wicked-smart, always learning, and unapologetic for wearing her heart on her sleeves. She knows she can be a force of nature and inspires in the way she deliberately self-disrupts for the next step-up challenge. She understands the value she delivers, is a champion for women and an advocate of stakeholder capitalism. Most of all, I have always known her to be kind, generous, fair and a compassionate person.
Coincidentally, like Lou, I deliberately took a pause from corporate in mid-2021 and have since pivoted to becoming a strategy and market entry consultant to Fintech companies as well as an impact investor and adviser to a pioneering pre-series social enterprise that is envisioning to solve access to quality education for the bottom-of-the-pyramid student segment in the Philippines.
I have also become an entrepreneur and is currently boot-strapping a start-up with an audacious aim of Php1 Billion in revenues in 5 or so years and impacting thousands of Overseas Filipinos and their families. I told Lou that I wish to contribute positively to the society by ensuring that the success of this venture generates meaningful impact to this vulnerable sector. I am very lucky and grateful that she has taken interest. While we are at an initial stage, the initial strategic conversations are already proving invaluable in elevating my perspective with her compelling and pragmatic views on the strategic growth imperatives, marketing, priority metrics, organizational development, and potentially the right positioning for future capital fund-raising. Our milestone is to refine the strategic roadmap. Despite being a practicing consultant myself, I find it essential to have this level and quality of a sparring partner.”