In April 2020, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala took a call from Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez, who sought help in organising private sector support for the government’s pandemic response team. The Ayala Corporation chairman immediately agreed to help, and then reached out to Fred Ayala to mobilise the effort. Working with government testing czar Vince Dizon and other big business leaders, Ayala helped kick off what he called “an avalanche of public-private collaboration.” “We were just in the mode of saying, ‘We will do whatever we can to help,’” Ayala recalls.

It’s a testament to all the well-placed trust in Fred, who is a Managing Director of Ayala Corporation, and who leads the group’s investments in the education sector. Ayala is board chairman of the Affordable Private Education Center, Inc., or APEC Schools, which aims to make quality education accessible to more people. Founded in 2013, APEC Schools now has tens of thousands of students across schools in Metro Manila and Calabarzon.