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services provider in the Philippine insurance
industry, as its Head of Marketing. Looking for
a change of pace, in 2003 she became General
Manager of International SOS, a global medical
assistance company providing 24/7 medical and
security assistance to businesses around the world.
“Our biggest client was ADB and we were also the
medical assistance partner of a number of travel
insurance providers that were outsourcing their
medical evacuations and repatriations, and concierge
assistance to us,” she recalls.
In 2009, Tracy was headhunted to join BDOI.
“They needed my marketing skills to ensure the
company served the insurance needs not only of
the BDO and SM Group, but also their clients and
affiliates. I saw massive potential for growth – all
we needed to do was to improve and deliver on
our services and leverage on the group’s extensive
business and client base,” she says.WE FIND WAYS
Tracy started these improvements at the core of
the organisation by reinforcing its culture. BDO’s
corporate governance is anchored on five basic
principles: accountability, fairness, integrity,
transparency and performance. This governance
philosophy is deeply rooted in BDO’s corporate
culture, and flows down through each of its
subsidiaries. “Culture is the foundation of the success
of any business, and ours is rooted in our parent
company’s vision, ‘We Find Ways’,” says Tracy.
“Technical training is essential in this line of work,
and we started this at the top.”
She believes humility is what makes a good
leader. “You should be humble enough to accept
that you are not omniscient, so you remain open tolearning from your employees, clients, suppliers and
colleagues,” Tracy notes. “You should be humble
enough to accept that you will make mistakes and
you should have the discipline to know your own
limitations, so you can improve each day.”
Last year, BDOI invested in its chief people
managers, training them in the four disciplines of
execution before cascading these learnings down the
line and incorporating them into the business’ KPIs.
“We’ve strengthened our teams’ ability to self-
correct their processes by building checks in the
workflow rather than having a separate post-activity
debrief, and we’re always upskilling our people on“You should be humble
enough to accept that you
will make mistakes and you
should have the discipline to
know your own
limitations, so you can
improve each day.”