Rene “Butch” S. Meily is the President of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF), a private sector disaster management organization that includes many of the major business groups and won the 2016 Prince of Wales Business in Community UPS International Disaster Relief award. PDRF plays a key role in the UN’s Connecting Business Initiative. He is also the President of QBO Innovation Hub, a public private partnership recently launched to nurture, mentor and prepare startups for exit. He is concurrently president of Pacific Global One, an aviation firm owned by the PLDT Group. Previously, he worked with a municipal bond insurance company in New York.
Prior to joining the bond firm, Butch was First Vice President and Special Assistant to the chairman of Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and president of the PLDT Smart Foundation. He served as Vice President, Communications for TLC Beatrice International, a leveraged buyout and multinational food company in New York and Paris. He has worked with several New York public relations firms.
A graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, Butch has an M.A. in Journalism and Communications from the University of Florida (UF). He was a recipient of the College of Journalism’s Alumnus of Distinction award in 2000. He returned to UF in 2003 as the Freedom Forum Distinguished Visiting Professor.