Senator Pilar Juliana “Compañera Pia” Cayetano
Senator Cayetano was the guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Cagayan de Oro’s 61st Induction of Officers.
She’s 42 years old, but looks like she’s in her early 30’s. She is the youngest elected female Senator in Philippine history. She’s quite tall for a Filipina, but her mother is a German-American, a former school teacher, Sandra Schramm, which might explain some of her height. She is the daughter of the late Senator Renato “Compañero” Cayetano, who had a popular TV Show “Compañero y Compañera”.
At 17 she was the youngest member of the Philippine national volleyball team, and at 18, the youngest member and captain of the University of the Philippines volleyball team, from which she graduated cum laude, with a degree in Economics. She also received her law degree from UP’s College of Law.
From 1992 until 2003 she worked for a corporate law firm before moving on to working directly for corporations themselves.
In 2004, after her father’s death, she won a Senate seat.
She is the founder of two charitable foundations, The Gabriel Symphony Foundation,and the Compañero Rene Cayetano Foundation.
She is noted as a sports enthusiast; a runner, a cyclist, a tri-athlete, and competed in the 2006 New York Marathon.
She is protestant christian, and she was born in Michigan, USA.
She has two brothers in politics, one is a sentator also, and the other used to be City Counselor for Muntinlupa City. Her third brother is a popular TV and movie director in the Philippines.
Her legislative achievements are the “Oil Spill Liability Act” (Republic Act 9483), the “Hospital Detention Law” (RA 9367), the “National Anti-Rabies Act” (RA 9482, and the only one I personally do not like, because I think it is a good idea gone bad, is the “Biofuels Act of 2007″ (RA 9367), but I don’t really blame her for that. A lot of people have been sucked into the biofuels disaster-in-the-making idea that will result in the likely starvation of millions of people because of crop lands being diverted to growing biofuel crops instead of food crops.
Otherwise, I’m quite proud of myself for getting a photo with her. I am sure she will have a long and fruitful career in Philippine politics.
June 29th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
In my opinion biofuel is a food waste. I don’t know if it has something to do with growing it in a land.