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Get to know the Philippines' David Nugent, former Vice President of Metro Pacific and Ace Saatchi & Saatchi.

Online PR News – 28-April-2011 –Born in the Philippines in 1970, David Nugent spent a tumultuous childhood in the United States and the Philippines. David Nugent left the Philippines at a young age, but he felt a strong connection to the country that was often difficult to ignore. Nugent eventually decided to move back to the Philippines in honor of his grandmother, one of the few positive figures from his childhood.

Upon his return to the Philippines, David Nugent not only made peace with his family’s past transgressions, but he managed to forge a successful professional career. His quest for personal peace took many forms for an adult Nugent wrestling with childhood demons. Nugent tackled memories of his mother while exploring a small piece of land he inherited on the coast of the Philippines, and he visited his Grandmother’s grave in Surigao. Nugent even came to grips with his father, a retired Navy man and U.S. Department of Defense employee who was the source of Nugent’s childhood abuse.

Before his exodus to the Philippines, Nugent studied Political Science at American University in Washington, D.C. and spent a brief period pursuing a writing career in Paris, France. Nugent may have missed success as a writer in Paris, but the very year he began a new life in the Philippines, a new professional life was born. In 2001, Nugent jump-started a powerful career with Metro Pacific Company, where he led media, investor, and corporate relations for the Filipino investment firm in a vice presidential role. David Nugent has also penned several articles for Philippines-based newspapers and magazines.

With dual citizenship in the United States and the Philippines, David Nugent is the embodiment of cross-cultural compassion, growth, and success. Nugent spent his childhood split between California and the Philippines, with a mother of Filipino-Chinese decent and an American father whose employment literally brought him around the world and his family to the US and the Philippines several times.

Nugent's childhood was chaotic and often violent, but unlike many suffering from similar memories, David Nugent plunged head first into his volatile past, using writing as an outlet to overcome his childhood torment. David Nugent believes that hidden pain can do more harm than good and vetting past demons can help tortured individuals overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

David Nugent shared his dramatic story in multiple articles published in a variety of Filipino newspapers. In 2008, The Philippine daily inquirer published, “Opening my Pandora's box for Christmas” and “Lies my mother told me,” two introspective pieces Nugent crafted to explain his past in a remarkably candid tone that surprised and intrigued many readers.

Nugent's writing and communication proficiency not only helped him overcome his past, it allowed him to build a successful business career in the Philippines. Over the last seven years, David Nugent has served in varying capacities for PLDT, Indofood Sukses MakMur, Metro Pacific Corporation, and First Pacific Company Limited. These companies represent some of the most influential telecommunications, food distribution, and investment firms operating in the Philippines, and are investments of First Pacific Company Limited, founded by the legendary Asian business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan. First Pacific was known for decades as the first professionally managed investment holding company run on world-class standards and governance, and remains a key investment holding for the Salim Group of Indonesia, amongst Asia’s largest and most diversified.

Indeed, David Nugent wields an impressive set of communication skills that have aided him as he directed investor relations, corporate communications and media programs for some of the Philippines' most renown companies.

David Nugent joined the Philippines-based Metro Pacific Corporation in 2001, serving as Vice President of Media until 2007. The investment vehicle of Hong Kong-headquartered First Pacific Company Limited, Nugent provided a critical investor relations and communications role while Metro Pacific Corporation restructured its businesses in the years following the Asian financial crisis. David Nugent's many activities included directing the rebuilding of relationships with the Philippines' and regional investor community during a critical period during which Metro Pacific was engaged in a comprehensive debt workout and restructuring of its management and business operations. Nugent also spoke on behalf of the company through numerous media channels, delivering official statements on any materially important news.

Nugent also served as Metro Pacific's Corporate Governance Compliance Officer, ensuring that Metro Pacific was an early adherent to corporate governance regulations set down by the Philippines SEC back in 2002. Nugent's duties at Metro Pacific also included directing the publication of the company's annual reports from 2002 to 2007. These reports became important documents that summarized each step in Metro Pacific's rebuilding and eventual resurgence, and they were used for both in-house and client-facing capacities.

Nugent's work in the Philippines was not limited to Metro Pacific; from 2002 to 2006, he conducted annual report creation duties for PLDT, the largest diversified telecommunications company in the Philippines. David Nugent also composed reports for Metro Pacific Corporation's parent company, First Pacific Company Limited, from 2004 to 2007, and conducted similar work in 2005 for Indofood Sukses MakMur, Indofood's largest diversified processed foods company and the world's largest producer of instant noodles.

The written communication talents exhibited by David Nugent also asserted themselves in the journalistic world. Nugent contributed provocative and insightful articles to a variety of news outlets in the Philippines, including a profile of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., the son of former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, which was published for the launch of a new Philippines-based magazine. Nugent has written on a variety of other topics for various newspapers and magazines in the Philippines.