MORE on the “Tatak UP” awardees. Dr. Rhodora Bucoy has worked with grassroots women, empowering and giving them a voice. She organized Sidlak – Region VII Gender Resource Center. Under her helm, UP Cebu leads in integrating gender in the curriculum, research, and community service.
Lawyer Ian Vincent Manticajon’s passion is in human rights law and litigation. He represents farmers locked in a land reform dispute case in southern Cebu, and handles pro bono human rights cases.
Ma. Edna Lee is a practitioner of permaculture, a branch of ecological design, ecological engineering, and environmental design. She initiated Tindak Sugbo, which highlights biking to promote health and help mitigate climate change.
For her expertise in environmental development, May Elizabeth Segura-Ybañez is a consultant for international organizations. The city’s reforestation project which she helped set up is internationally known for its environmental conservation management and sustainability.
Engineer Zoilo Cortes, the engineers’ engineer, devoted a long career as Veco’s COO.
His expertise is now plowed into serving Mandauehanons as a member of the technical working group.
His fellow engineer Virgilio Abellana, USJR’s engineering dean, is active in research and community service. After the Bohol earthquake, he spearheaded assistance efforts with the students’ fabricated solar lamps.
Media practitioner Michelle So has devoted her time to professionalizing the Cebu media industry and improving journalistic skills and journalist welfare such as Cenewof and its 200 members.
Lawyers Manuel S. Go and Jasmine Oporto, and Police Insp. Maria Theresa Macatangay are awardees for law, public service and governance. Go helped realize the setting up of various joint ventures in Cebu with such countries as Australia, US, Japan and Norway in a broad range of industries. His community service spans an aggregate of 17 years as board chairman in schools and public utilities.
Oporto passed both the Philippine and New York bar exams. Prior to joining Aboitiz Equity Ventures as chief legal officer, she provided free legal assistance to OFW’s in Hong Kong, especially victims of domestic abuse. And Macatangay, chief of the PNP Regional Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, is multi-awarded for drives and rescues in Cebu and Bohol.
Engineer-builder William Christopher “Wally” Liu of Primary Group of Builders, the leading provider of integrated shelter solutions in Cebu, is a prime mover of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines.
Health and medicine awardees are medical doctors Crispin Diaz, Jesusito Zubiri, and the late Gaudencio Hermosisima.
Diaz is Cebu’s first pulmonologist and helped form Baga ten years ago. It rents out medical equipment to hospitals at very low rates which then fund scholarships for deserving medical studies.
Zubiri, the pioneer in plastic surgery in Cebu, has conducted cleft-lip medical missions in different places since 1980 in the Visayas and Mindanao.
For posthumous awardee Hermosisima, let Shakespeare not repeat “The good is oft interred with their bones.” Prior to his death in 2005, he accomplished about 3000 surgeries, and innovated thyroid surgery techniques outside Manila, techniques peers say continue to be gold standard until today.