Daven Tamayo

Boardroom Tea: Why Manila has been Googling Ann Cuisia

Article (news)

Salve Ibaňez

ABS-CBN News

<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1773904709874ann cuisia edu.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Anne Cuisia and Edu Manzano. Courtesy of Ann Cuisia</div>Manila has been Googling Ann Cuisia since last week’s hard launch with Edu Manzano — and what people are finding is far more interesting than a love story. When a high-profile businesswoman enters a public romance, we all wonder whether it will distract from the work. I’d argue the opposite applies here: Edu now has a partner who will drag him into Senate Technical Working Group hearings on blockchain governance. But let me back up.Last December, at the FintechAlliance.ph Christmas party, Ann and Edu were at our table — and my fellow mischief-maker Catz Jalandoni and I were very busy taking selfies. Or so we made it appear! <div><iframe class="instagram-media instagram-media-rendered" id="instagram-embed-0" src="https://www.instagram.com/p/DVsDv1FGHzw/embed/?cr=1&amp;v=14&amp;wp=675&amp;rd=https%3A%2F%2Fod2-workbench-web.abs-cbn.com&amp;rp=%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A1519968.7999999523%7D" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="" frameBorder="0" height="925" data-instgrm-payload-id="instagram-media-payload-0" scrolling="no" style="background:white;max-width:540px;width:calc(100% - 2px);border-radius:3px;border:1px solid rgb(219, 219, 219);box-shadow:none;display:block;margin:0px 0px 12px;min-width:326px;padding:0px"></iframe></div><script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>We were, in fact, angling our phones to take secret photos of the two of them, laughing like they’d known each other for decades. The ease between them was impossible to miss and everyone had the same question on their mind. Are they?Months later, the internet had its answer.When Edu introduced Ann as his “life partner” on a hotel rooftop at sunset — Tantoco clan scion Rica de Jesus capturing the moment on video — it traveled fast. Then came Franco Mabanta’s wedding on March 10, where their Peanut Gallery Media Network colleagues made it official in the most delightful way: “The rumors are true.”<div>So who is Ann Cuisia?</div>She is the founder and CEO of blockchain firm TraXion Tech, known in business circles as a pioneer in financial technology and digital transformation. Her flagship projects include digiCOOP, the first digital cooperative platform in the country, and Gava, a crowdfunding platform for social causes. She also leads the Kadena Hub (now Qadena Foundation), a blockchain accelerator in Mindanao.Here’s what most of the newly minted Ann Cuisia fans don’t know: she has been talking about blockchain since 2017, back when most people thought she was describing science fiction. She was a lone voice then, mapping out what distributed ledgers could do for the unbanked while the rest of us were still squinting at the concept. The world has since caught up — slowly and loudly. What’s drawn her into wider public consciousness lately isn’t blockchain. It’s her nerve. When an earlier version of the CADENA Act proposed mandating blockchain as the mechanism for tracking government expenditures, Cuisia publicly argued against it. Here’s the part worth a second look: as a blockchain entrepreneur, she stood to benefit commercially from government adoption of the technology. She argued against it anyway. Her position was that governance legislation should be technology-neutral, focused on outcomes rather than prescribing the tool. The bill was subsequently revised. She framed her own participation not as industry advocacy but as a taxpayer who didn’t want a bad law outliving everyone who passed it.On cybersecurity, she appeared at a Technical Working Group hearing in February on the proposed Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Act, flagging the bill’s dangerous concentration of authority in a single agency and warning that without explicit guardrails, such powers tend to expand incrementally. She also raised concerns about provisions on open-source data collection — cybersecurity agencies, she argued, must stay anchored to protecting networks and infrastructure, not drift into monitoring content or public opinion.On tax reform, her argument is straightforward: the Philippines doesn’t lack the tools to modernize revenue collection. It lacks the political will to deploy them. Mandatory digital tax compliance, a more empowered revenue authority, alignment with the global minimum corporate tax framework — governance failures, she calls them, as much as technical gaps.This is the woman Edu Manzano volunteered to drive around for her meetings.That tidbit is juicy. When Ann had no driver, Edu volunteered. But as the day went on, it was apparent that was a role he had yet to master. He kept driving into one-way streets! I can imagine that to be even more endearing to Ann. When I asked Ann about the relationship, she didn’t reach for superlatives. “He calms me,” she said. Coming from a woman who has spent two decades in rooms full of people performing, that restraint is the highest possible compliment.At a certain age, you stop tolerating games. You know what you want and what you don’t, and you stop pretending otherwise. He knew too. After months of bumping into each other at the same events, Edu started asking — quietly, pointedly — whether she was seeing someone. This paints a rather different picture of Edu. Edu, a veteran of Philippine showbiz’s most unforgiving decades, knows exactly what happens when a private person walks into his orbit. The bashers arrive before the compliments do. Apparently, he worried about this on her behalf. He needn’t have.“I just laugh at the bashers and ignore them,” Ann told me. “I seem to be more bulletproof than he is.”Madam, we stan.

Manila has been Googling Ann Cuisia since last week’s hard launch with Edu Manzano — and what people are finding is far more interesting than a love story.

Manila has been Googling Ann Cuisia since last week’s hard launch with Edu Manzano — and what people are finding is far more interesting than a love story.