BUILDING FUTURE LEADERS

For more than 75 years, National Bookstore, a stationery, book, and gift retailing business, has grown from a small corner space of a haberdashery situated at the foot of Escolta Bridge in Santa Cruz, Manila, to more than two hundred forty stores all over the Philippines. Xandra Ramos-Padilla, the granddaughter of co-founder Socorro Cáncio-Ramos, is the current Managing Director of the family business. She tells us of her beginnings, “My grandmother recruited me fresh from my college graduation. She made me go