Ed Rodriguez (ADB 1991–2007)
As ADB staff, Ed kept his hand in education, teaching on the side at his alma mater, Ateneo, and doing the Capstone course on management strategy. Before leaving ADB, Ed was asked by the group organizing Enderun Colleges to work with them. Enderun started as a training school for people wanting to work in the restaurant business, and was expanding. What started in a building near ADB in 2008 expanded into several new and purposebuilt buildings in McKinley Hill.
So when Ed retired in 2007, he started designing the curriculum for Enderun’s business school, getting approval from the Commission on Higher Education, and strategizing for the niche Enderun would serve in the market. Ed had asked Ateneo business students what they would do when they graduated—and was surprised to find that few of them had thought much about it. So his vision for Enderun was a business school that would help students prepare themselves from the start for their careers, by offering career-driven programs, a strategy he found appeals to parents and students.
Ed at the entrance to Enderun College.
The niches that Ed found for Enderun’s Business School are (1) wealth management; (2) business process management (for post-call center careers) and consulting; (3) digital marketing (internet), including such things as design and delivery of architectural work and customer relationship management; and (4) entrepreneurship, especially as small businesses are very prominent in the Philippines. Ed also believes the education should be highly practical, with experiential teaching and textbooks read as homework.
Students must put in 700 hours in practicum before graduating. To support this, the school has a large network of industry partners. Given the partnerships and the practicums, many students have jobs waiting from them when they leave school. The 6-year-old restaurant school has graduated 2 classes, and Enderun now has about 1,000 students.
Enderun has several connections to ADB, most often through spouses, including Chad Davis (in restaurant training), Jim Clarkson, Jingo Zara, Yayi Esguerra, and Hyun Jie Park Minc. Ed met many of the people involved in Enderun through its restaurant, which used to be close to ADB. The school attracts well-known specialists, such as Jun Palafox (who teaches design and planning). Robin Boumphrey, who also teaches at Enderun, has put his teaching salary back into scholarships for needy students.
Ed with culinary students at Enderun.
Enderun’s target clientele is from the upper middle class, given tuition fees, and includes better-off overseas workers whose children went to high school abroad, but want to return home for acculturation and further schooling. The student body is about 75% Filipinos and 25% others mostly Koreans. Enderun also offers some scholarships for less well off students. Ed, who is currently fully absorbed in his job as Enderun’s Dean of Business and Entrepreneurship, says ultimately he wants to devote more time to helping the underprivileged. And he still enjoys coming back to ADB occasionally, brainstorming with colleagues about ideas for the school and the future.