Making it in the Big Apple

By Christian V. Esguerra
Inquirer

ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey–Filipino success has a lot to do not just with skills but the right disposition.

“Sometimes, it really depends on the person if he has the right attitude and the clarity of vision that should go with his skills,” Mila Mendez, 54, tells the Inquirer in an interview at the sprawling Tropicana Hotel and Casino here.

This was the formula Mila and her husband Fernando “Nanding” Mendez used when they first arrived in the United States in the 1980s. Mila has since moved from a clerical job at Dow Jones to a top marketing official at the American publishing and financial information firm. At one point she was earning more than $80,000 a year.

Her husband was just as successful in the design, publishing and consultancy industry. Today the couple runs the Special Edition Press, a leading promoter of shows for Filipino communities in the New York-New Jersey area.

Bonding

On top of their thriving business, they own properties in both states, affording them the luxury of moving across the Hudson River depending on where they want to spend the weekend.

How the Mendez couple was “made” in the big league was the product of sheer determination, skills and, of course, Divine Providence. It began when Nanding, the more “adventurous” of the two, left Manila to try it out in the US in 1982.

He was already a successful art director in top advertising agencies back home. But he somehow felt — and knew — that he was meant for something bigger.

He spent his first four years in Billings, Montana before Mila and their two sons — Nathan and Marvin — joined him in 1986.

The family’s reunion and subsequent “road trip” from Montana to New York had the clear mark of Nanding’s vision for his family.

The cross-country trip took all of six days, taking the family to places like Dakota, Ohio, Michigan, Washington, New Jersey, and finally, the Big Apple. Whatever Nanding owned in Montana was heaped on a hitch attached to an old Nissan Maxima.

In two weeks Mila was hired as an administrative manager — a “glamorized” secretary, she says — at the Knight-Ridder media company.

The job wasn’t anything close to her erstwhile job as marketing research analyst at the old Philippine Advertising Counselors Inc. But for an Asian trying to find her place in busy New York at that time, she really didn’t have much of a choice.

Big gamble

Nanding, a former art director also at the PAC, spent his first six months in the Big Apple doing design and consultancy work. Later he designed catalogues for a jewelry company before joining the prestigious Simon & Schuster publishing house.

“Moving to the US was really a big gamble on my part,” he says. “But I had skills and I knew I could get a nice job.”

Mila and Nanding, who met while working at the PAC, had practically the same determination and natural efficiency for climbing New York’s corporate ladder.

Mila’s skills in marketing research and data analysis weren’t left unnoticed. In three months her boss promoted her to the position of international marketing manager. She later joined her boss at Dow Jones and her annual salary shot up from $28,000 to $37,000.

The job also gave her a postcard view of New York from her office on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center I. She showed so much potential that her company sent her to study at the New York Financial Institute.

When she left the company in 1994, she was a business manager for international marketing, earning around $80,000 yearly.

Meanwhile Nanding too was making waves in the world of publishing and design.

He says that back in the late 1980s, he was among the few in the business to notice the immense potential of incorporating computer with design. So he studied programs like QuarkXpress, Illustrator and Photoshop. As good an artist as he was, he knew computers could do the job better.

“Back then, these programs were seen only as toys or computer additives,” he says. “I saw their potential in my work and I even ended up teaching them to several art directors in New York.”

Special Edition Press

By the mid-1990s, the Mendez couple knew they were ready to venture on their own.

For some reason Nanding wanted to do a book on then President Fidel Ramos and Vice President Joseph Estrada. He and his wife ended up publishing a magazine reporting significant stories from home to Filipinos in the US. It had a circulation of around 25,000—said to be the biggest for any ethnic publication that time—and lasted for 10 years.

Like other Filipino publications, the couple’s Special Edition Press magazine helped boost their compatriots’ “community consciousness” in the US.

In 1994, they were offered to promote a show by Kuh Ledesma in New York. They took the job, partly because they were risk-takers, partly because of “dismay.”

People like Mila and Nanding knew their art and advertising and just couldn’t stand seeing promo items like posters shaming—not showcasing—what’s good about Filipino entertainers set to visit the US.

“Imagine cut-out pictures of Gary Valenciano pasted on some cheap paper,” she recalls. “Who would bother to go to a show being promoted just like that?”

Whatever the couple learned in advertising work showed when their Special Edition company branched into promotions. Suddenly posters in the New York-New Jersey area took a semblance of a professional job. Promo tours were organized and effective, usually bringing Filipino celebrities to Filipino restaurants, groceries and other establishments.

Special Edition had previously promoted concerts by Banig, Sharon Cuneta, Nora Aunor, and Gary V. Early this month the company teamed up with Kumustahan Inc. to bring the APO Hiking Society, Nanette Inventor and Heart Evangelista for a concert at the Boardwalk Hall here.

Philippine fiesta in America

Besides concerts, Filipinos in the East Coast look forward to the annual Philippine Fiesta in America every August at the Meadowlands Expo Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.

It’s popular and well-attended, says Mila, simply because it’s the real thing. On top of a trade fair, it has the ati-atihan march, arnis and chess demonstrations and a beauty pageant.

The traditional novena procession isn’t only a commemoration of the mythical finding of the cross by St. Helena To Mila and Nanding. It’s also their way of expressing gratitude for the many blessings they’ve received.

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