New Perspective Media Group CEO Dr. Karen Remo has made it on the cover of FRIDAY, the largest weekly magazine in the United Arab Emirates.
Remo, who is also the Publisher of The Filipino Times, has been featured in the magazine’s cover story titled “From Abu Dhabi secretary to UAE Entrepreneur of the Year: Karen Remo has ‘never stopped dreaming’”.
It captures her inspiring humble beginnings as a barrio teenager from the town of Cuenca, Batangas, to how she sculpted her own path of success from having a nine-to-five job to becoming a multi-award-winning entrepreneur in the UAE.
“I was always a dreamer. I feel my imagination has brought me where I am today. Even during tough times, in my mind, I was flying high,” she told FRIDAY journalist Tessy Koshy.
Hailing from a lower-middle-class family of small entrepreneurs, this eldest of five siblings recounted her life in the province. She related to the magazine that her life revolved around the daily grind of her parents—from kneading dough for pandesal in their small home bakery to deskinning chicken in the slaughterhouse.
“My parents ran several small businesses to make ends meet. Being the eldest, I was a hands-on worker, right from age seven,” Remo told FRIDAY.
All these had prepared the young Remo for greater opportunities, and she knew very early on in life that she had the whole world in front of her. The feature highlights her tale of transformation as a little girl who wore hand-me-down, tattered school uniforms from her aunts and uncles into an empowered Filipina.
“Whatever was missing in my life, it existed in my imagination. In my make-believe world, I was wearing a sparkling white uniform, eating ice cream and living a great life,” she was quoted as saying.
Driven by the need to stand on her own feet to keep her daughter Naomi well-fed and help her family back home, her strong sense of purpose brought her to Dubai.
Her OFW life in the beginning resonates with daily struggles of millions of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who brave pangs of loneliness elsewhere. She once faced visa violations and mounting debts when she was starting, but she refused to give up on her dreams for her daughter and family.
An old saying puts it that there’s no paved smooth path of destiny, but Remo carved her own trail and created a riveting tale of success. From being an executive secretary in an oil and gas company, Remo used her takeaways from the world of energy to break through international business journalism. This opened the doors for her to establish NPM.
Under Remo’s leadership, NPM, which only relied on three staff in the beginning, had since risen as a leading, respected media and communications agency with 4 offices across the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
With her remarkable approach in transforming the business, she was feted the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ by Gulf Capital SME Awards in 2020 and the ‘Female Leader of the Year’ in the 2019 Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) Awards.
Her secret to success? Remo said her employees are her biggest asset. “As an entrepreneur, finding the right talent and building them goes a long way. The bigger the company, the smaller the founder becomes,” she said in her interview with FRIDAY.
“One has to keep innovating and look for the good in whatever comes along the way, with a heart full of gratitude,” she added.
Remo is also the Managing Editor of 999 Magazine, the official publication of the Ministry of Interior which NPM publishes on its behalf.
Another source of pride for Remo is The Filipino Times newspaper that continues to lend voice for OFWs in the larger Middle East. It’s the largest the biggest free newspaper in the UAE and digital news portal for Filipinos in the region with an average of 4.5 million page views per month.
A copy of the full interview is available at https://fridaymagazine.ae/life-culture/people-profiles/from-abu-dhabi-secretary-to-uae-entrepreneur-of-the-year-karen-remo-has-never-stopped-dreamin-1.2312907
LOOK: Dubai-based Filipina CEO lands on the cover of UAE’s largest magazine
Source: Pinoy News Udpates PH
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