Ending With The Future In Mind: UMak’s Year-End Convocation 2021
The program started with a message from Hon. Mayor Mar-len Abigail C. Binay from the City Government of Makati who expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the UMak community for the different achievements and encourages everyone to be inspired by the program’s theme, to continue being “hopeful…. and (having) a positive outlook in life” as we end the year 2021.
This is followed by Vice President for Administration, Atty. Jewel D. Bulos, to introduce our guest speaker for this morning’s session. Through an insightful discussion entitled “Foresight & Futures Thinking: Making Public Managers & Education Leaders Futures Ready” by Ms. Lizan E. Perante-Calina, DPA, she explained how to manage our “mindset that is always looking forward, wherein we are comfortable with any uncertainties and the unknown, and the unspoken”. Dr. Perante-Calina’s objectives in discussing these concepts were to “1) understand how futures thinking and foresight support professional development, 2) immerse with the strategic tools of futures thinking and foresight and apply its tenets to the professional development, 3) adapt the principles of futures thinking and foresight as a wise leader, 4) explore emerging issues and trends in a VUCA (vulnerabilities, uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities).”
The uniqueness of her approach contextualizes and emphasizes her discussion on perceiving leadership and innovation from our Filipino perspective through “local wisdom… and indigenization of our frameworks” rather than relying heavily on foreign concepts and ideologies. Matching the theme of our year-end convocation, Dr. Perante-Calina’s discussion serves as a guide and grounds us on how we can move forward despite of the “unknowns” and “wicked problems” that we are all facing and be creative and imaginative in finding more “wicked solutions” for our communities. She concludes her talk by sharing the Hiraya Foresignt Terraces” that operationalizes how we, as individuals and as an institution, be futures ready leaders and managers.
