Last Saturday’s gathering in UP Diliman dazzled with a night of glamor as we celebrated this year’s distinguished alumni. Surprisingly and humbly, yours truly was part of this night as an honoree. How I ended up alongside these people whose impactful contributions have reshaped industries and transformed communities is a mystery to me.

As one awardee after another filled the halls of the Bahay ng Alumni, nostalgia enveloped us. That night, we stepped into the university expecting only to collect an award. Little did we know that we would return and relive moments of our youth when we had wondered if we had a place in the world, whether our future selves would turn out to be what we all hoped to be.

My good friend Engineer Isidro Consunji, also chairman and CEO of DMCI Holdings Inc., led this year’s batch of distinguished alumni and delivered a narrative that transported UP President Angelo Jimenez, UPAA President Robert Lester Aranton, UPAA officers, the UP Chancellors, and all us guests back in time to when we used to be students who felt like the university was an endless world of possibilities.

Consunji recounted his personal journey from being an ordinary student to the accomplished figure he is now. Reflecting on his time at UP, he described a period of restlessness and a deviation from the traditional academic path, which included a year working in his family’s business and earning minimum wage.

This hiatus was instrumental in shaping his understanding of business operations, efficiency and the importance of interacting with individuals from different walks of life.

His eventual return to UP and the completion of his civil engineering degree — albeit taking six years to finish a five-year course — was a testament to his resilience and dedication.

I personally can testify to the noble virtues of Consunji not only as a leader or the “Supremo” of the construction industry, as we called him — he was chair of the Construction Industry Authority of the Philippines back when I worked with him as undersecretary at the Department of Trade and Industry. I attest to this also as a friend.

Consunji is a man of humility who would ensure that you and your staff dine with him at his table. He is a man of generosity who will freely give opportunities to people who exude potential. He is a strong believer in the lifelong process of learning, sending DMCI officers to the University of Asia and the Pacific’s prestigious Strategic Business Economics Program (SBEP) where some of them became my classmates.

Today, Consunji is the lone recipient of this year’s UPAA Most Distinguished Alumnus Award, one of the highest honors bestowed upon UP graduates who have made significant contributions to society. The UPAA honor is not just his personal achievement but a symbol of his and his fellow awardees’ journeys and perseverance.

Consunji’s recognition that night conveyed a lesson that resonated with all of us in the room.

Completing our degrees was not the ultimate goal nor was it becoming towering figures in the paths that we chose; it was the process that held the essence. In the process, we learned to ask questions, forged lifelong friendships, and found mentors who challenged us to think boldly, critically and beyond the bounds of convention.

Ironically, while our younger selves had fretted so much over the outcomes of what our UP education could do for us, we are proud and grateful that the people we ended up being learned to embrace and value the process, to commit ourselves to a cause we believed in so deeply that we would willingly give our whole selves to it.

Consunji recounted his personal journey from being an ordinary student to the accomplished figure he is now.

As Consunji said, the UPAA honor has filled us all with a renewed sense of responsibility as we gaze into the future with the knowledge that our work is far from over.

Today, I reflect once again on what more I can do in my last few months at the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines. While the end of my term is near, the same cannot be said of my personal commitment to support our innovators, creators and entrepreneurs.

I am certain that, with or without a position, I would continue to be part of that process of change in empowering our innovative and creative kababayan.