Pauline Juan, executive director of the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), covers more ground in nation-building by marrying commerce with creative technology.

What intimidates you?&rdquo; I ask Pauline Juan.
 Long pause.
 My curiosity grew but so as my apprehension to keep prodding. For a second, I regret my audacity because I&rsquo;ve heard stories about Pauline &mdash; that in the thrall of her authority, even the most imposing characters flinch.
 Then she breaks the silence.
 &ldquo;You know that moment when you size up a room, whether it&rsquo;s on Zoom or a literal room, and see if it&rsquo;s worth your time or if your voice can be heard? Power structure is kind of inherent in everything we do. I can be silent even if I have something to say if the power structure isn&rsquo;t conducive to anyone being heard and getting something done,&rdquo; she says.
 Further on, she laughs, disclosing how she&rsquo;s occasionally intimidated in luxury stores. Logic gets her every time the urge to covet high fashion items arises; this habit to self-check applies except for shoes, her Achilles&rsquo; heel. Poised in her bearing and firm in her stance, Pauline can only name two things that unnerve her. But those two things also foretell the forces that drive her professional life: leadership and tastemaking.

Photographed by Jo Ann Bitagcol

A Change of Format When American journalist and entrepreneur Natalie Massenet founded Net-a-Porter during the internet boom in the early 2000s, she walked away from her career in the glossies to realize the ambition of selling clothing in a magazine format. It was met with resistance, but in hindsight, her market prescience accounts for the advent of a new kind of &ldquo;magazine&rdquo; &mdash; one where you can shop the editor&rsquo;s picks directly. It democratized the retail experience by bringing fashion to everyone&rsquo;s fingertips.
 Like Net-a-Porter&rsquo;s founder, Pauline spotted an opportunity before it became obvious. In 2016, she left the publishing industry during the social media explosion. What came out of her retirement became a pivot for reinvention. Following a brief hiatus after ending an illustrious 15-year tenure as the editor-in-chief of Preview magazine, she joined CITEM in 2018 to preside as its executive director.
 To this day, this trend continues; former editors move on to become digital leaders and institutional voices. To name a few &mdash; Lucky&rsquo;s Eva Chen who&rsquo;s now the director of fashion partnerships at Instagram and China&rsquo;s Angelica Cheung who&rsquo;s now a part of Sequoia Capital, a company that invests in daring enterprises within fashion and entertainment.
 Pauline, on the other hand, joined the government by way of CITEM, the export promotional arm of the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry. It aims to set the highest standards of creativity, excellence, and innovation to achieve export competitiveness in the international market.
 Like a magazine editor, Pauline works with creatives, but unlike a magazine editor, Pauline leads a full assembly of professionals ranging from the administrative ranks to outsourced personnel. She acts as a conduit between creators and stakeholders.
 She ascribes her success to the force of her personality. &ldquo;The creative field isn&rsquo;t always a democracy,&rdquo; she warns. &ldquo; If you&rsquo;re managing creatives, you need to be able to foster an environment where everybody can contribute, but at the same time, lead and go towards your vision. It gets complicated when you&rsquo;re open to everybody to give feedback but kind of get lost in all the feedback... With CITEM, more than ever, it&rsquo;s about being steadfast. It would have been so easy to say, &lsquo;let&rsquo;s not digitalize,&rsquo; because the road to get there was difficult, but you have to force the training. People can&rsquo;t see into the future. You have to carry the torch.&rdquo;

People can&rsquo;t see into the future. You have to carry the torch.

Destined for Digital As if it needs an introduction, the onslaught of the pandemic in 2020 stormed in and capsized the workforce. No industry was left untouched. Imagine being the captain of an agency whose main attraction involves mounting physical trade shows to bolster the design and lifestyle sectors; in a snap, they had to go. In response, Pauline had to unlearn 30 years of trade show history and chart a roadmap for CITEM to flourish in the digital space.
 &ldquo;The pandemic was a silver lining in the sense that we could have never done the digitalization if it didn&rsquo;t happen,&rdquo; Pauline says. The rush of new systems breathed life into their circulation of projects. Her team had to migrate their presence online and among the assets procured were PHx Tokyo, an eight-month digital mentorship program for Filipino fashion designers that culminates in a showroom exhibition in Lifort Harajuku, Tokyo; CREATE Philippines&rsquo; Creative Futures, a two-day conference that celebrates the economic potential of Filipino creativity; Maison &amp; Objet and More (MOM) Digital Days, an initiative that expedites the sourcing process by curating brands and pieces embodying a central theme; and FAME+, an umbrella platform that gathers exhibitors, buyers, and stakeholders as one community.
 The scope of the assignment employs a constellation of disciplines requiring a mastermind like Pauline to orchestrate the performance. I can&rsquo;t help but ask, &ldquo;What sharpened your eye? What were the early prompts in your career that led to your varied and exacting preferences?&rdquo;
 &ldquo;I tell this to a lot of the editors who&rsquo;ve been under me who decided to resign for one reason or another, and especially those that decided to pursue higher learning &mdash; I really believe in a liberal arts education,&rdquo; Pauline says. &ldquo;My aunt, the director Marilou Diaz-Abaya, told me, &lsquo;I think the best ace you can have in your pocket is a liberal arts education,&rsquo; which meant when I was in Ateneo, to make sure that I did literature, psychology, history, economics, theology, and philosophy. At the end of the day, you think they&rsquo;re just general subjects, but they teach you to view things from a multidisciplinary perspective. If you read the book of Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education, people who&rsquo;ve taken it, particularly those in business, are able to see things beyond profit. They&rsquo;re able to see the reasons why.&rdquo; As a testament to this belief, Pauline took her master&rsquo;s degree in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics.
 We live in a world that stresses the importance of STEM education, a learning pedagogy that favors specialization in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But Pauline assures us that narrowing down one&rsquo;s skills set isn&rsquo;t the only way to stay competitive because short-sighted execution without an overarching rationale is a recipe for systemic collapse. To question, to wager, to evaluate, to condense, to comprehend, to combine, to revise &mdash; those are the competencies that will save the population from blind servitude.
 &ldquo;Do you think you&rsquo;ll be working in the same industry if you&rsquo;re a 21-year-old in 2021?&rdquo; She replies with a resounding, &ldquo;Hell yeah!&rdquo; Pauline is tenacious but only because she can see the big picture. With the help of technology and her arsenal of experience, she&rsquo;s able to expand the territory of Philippine commerce and creativity despite its share of challenges. Under her supervision, there&rsquo;s cohesion, and watching her thrive in a position she&rsquo;s wired for can sway even the most hopeless of cynics out of their doom-and-gloom mindset.

Union of Trade: Pauline Juan Harnesses the Power of Business and Creativity

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