Senator Risa Hontiveros is a health and women’s rights advocate, a longtime activist, and a champion of the basic sectors. She is the Philippine Senate’s first socialist woman senator.

Senator Risa is a proud member of the Akbayan Party and is its current National Chairperson. She serves the current 18th Congress as the Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, a role she occupied in the 17th Congress as well.

She was also the Chair of the Senate Committee on Health before becoming its Vice-Chairperson. In keeping with her track record of championing better health for the Filipino people, Senator Hontiveros worked hard for the passage of several landmark health laws. In her first three years in the Senate, she principally authored and sponsored 13 laws.

She is the principal sponsor and author of the Expanded Maternity Leave Law, which provides 105 maternity days to women, and the Philippine Mental Health Law, the nation’s first true national policy on mental health. Through this law, local communities will be strengthened by having mental health services offered at the barangay level, including age-appropriate mental health education in schools.

She also sponsored and authored the Strengthened Anti-Hospital Deposit Law, the First 1,000 Days or Kalusugan at Nutrisyon ng Mag-Nanay Law, and the Philippine HIV and AIDS Policy Act. She also co-authored the Universal Health Care Law.

Senator Hontiveros is a long-standing defender of women and gender rights. She is the author of the Safe Streets and Public Spaces Law. This law penalizes catcalling, wolf-whistling and all forms of street harassment, and gives those targeted by harassment the ability to report the incident in real-time to the police or to deputized personnel.

For the 18th Congress Senator Hontiveros has filed the following measures: the SOGIE Equality Bill, the Divorce Bill, the Universal Social Pension Bill for Senior Citizens, The Girls Not Brides Bill, and a bill Raising the current Age of Sexual Consent.

Before she was a Senator, she was a two-term partylist Representative of Akbayan Party, Senator Hontiveros was also a successful television journalist and news anchor and a member of the government panel that negotiated peace talks with the National Democratic Front.

A solo mother of four, she graduated Cum Laude from the Ateneo de Manila University with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science

Jane Jimenez-Basas, CEO and President of Cignal TV Inc, leads the biggest and fastest growing Pay-TV Company in the Philippines. Jane is also concurrently the CEO and President of TV5 Network Inc, the 3rd largest Free to Air Network in the Philippines. BothCignal TV, Inc. and TV5 Network Inc. are subsidiaries of MediaQuest Holdings. MediaQuest Holdings is the media and content arm of the PLDT Group of Companies.

Before Cignal and TV5, Jane has served as the Group Head for Prepaid Marketing in Smart Telecommunications. She has also assumed senior leadership in roles in Globe Telecom, ABS-CBN Hong Kong, Bayantel and Citibank N.A.

Just recently, Jane was named the Asia Media Woman of the Year by ContentAsia on September 7, 2017 in Singapore, in recognition of her invaluable contributions to the Philippine media and telecommunications industries.

At the end of her 8-year career in the corporate world, dabbling in key positions in supply chain, finance, marketing, and social responsibility, Krie decided to go on her own, beginning with learning about what was then a new concept, social entrepreneurship, at the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco. Krie then founded HOUSE as a project in 2006 in the hopes of creating a group of enterprises focused on providing employment and rehabilitation for at-risk young adults. In 2007, she single-handedly established Messy Bessy Cleaners, Inc., a breakthrough social enterprise that is focused on providing a holistic poverty alleviation program for disadvantaged youth. At the onset of the first college graduate, Krie led the establishment of HOUSE Foundation in 2016. She continues to lead HOUSE’s efforts in creating innovative solutions for the complex challenges that come with today’s at-risk youth.

Messy Bessy is a line of natural, biodegradable, non-toxic home and personal care products. Our business was established in 2007 for the main purpose of providing education, employment and rehabilitation for at-risk (formerly abused, trafficked, incarcerated impoverished) young adults. At the onset of our first college graduate in 2015, we’ve established the HOUSE Foundation (Helping Ourselves through Sustainable Enterprises) in an effort to scale and replicate our social innovation.