Author: Thoney Pascual

On November 21, 2025, Dr. Karen De Asis from the Philippines will be awarded at the Sofitel Phnom Penh, Phokeethra, Cambodia. She is the 2025 ASEAN Women Entrepreneurs Awardee. Honorees from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam will join her.

NGOs and charities say they aid families in need, but donations and revenue from various recruiting events make it challenging for them to keep doing it.

Helping Filipino family businesses and their brands do well and compete in local and global commerce is a long-term goal that creates hundreds or thousands of jobs. Sustainable and better livelihoods make life better for many individuals, including business owners and their growing workforce. This is the business and advocacy style of Dr. Catherine, also known as Karen De Asis (MBA, PhD), a 2025 ASEAN Women Entrepreneurs Awardee from the Philippines. Dr. Karen De Asis started MKS Marketing Consulting and is responsible for its brand strategy for the company’s clients.

Dr. Karen will receive her award during the Pinnacle Entrepreneurs Forum 2025 in Cambodia on November 21, 2025. The event will recognize ASEAN women entrepreneurs and will also honor fellow AWEN honorees from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

As a brand, marketing, and media company, MKS Marketing Consulting helps Filipino businesses and brands compete in the market. We have exclusively worked with Filipino family businesses led by visionary founders for over a decade, as we believe they are more adaptable and successful. ul. When they do well, their brands help the economy all around the country. Such success naturally leads to more jobs and company growth, which helps more Filipino families live sustainably. The goal of MKS brand consulting is to help Filipino businesses run by visionaries succeed so that more Filipino families can benefit as customers and as people who make money. Dr. Karen says.

Effective strategic branding and marketing generate corporate success, according to MKS Marketing Consulting. To attain amazing results, you need a smart brand strategy, captivating content, effective communication, and savvy use of media.

At the Awen assessment and debate, MKS showed three successful case studies of family-owned businesses. First, there was a retail brand that was 30 years old and had 47 stores when it became an MKS brand account. The brand became the market leader and created thousands of jobs after reorganizing from 47 branches to 350 company-owned branches in 15 years. The second case study is about a new company that only makes air conditioners.  In the past ten years, it has added air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, TVs, and washing machines to its product line, all delivered to more than 1000 dealer shops around the country, which helped the dealership business and created jobs. People don’t know anything about the third drugstore brand. After four years, it took on the healthcare drugstore retail category by giving customers cheaper choices.

Good brand strategists are leaders and have a lot of responsibility. To run a brand well, you need both natural and creative intelligence. Filipino-owned businesses that build and manage successful brands make market leaders, strong competitors, and loyal customers. However, the social impact and advocacy are much greater when more and more successful Filipino family businesses grow and provide stable jobs for many Filipino families for decades and generations. Dr. Karen states that our MKS brand consulting aims to create this social impact and advocacy.

MKS Marketing Consulting has a lot of experience with brand management and marketing in the following areas: retail, food, healthcare manufacturing, consumer durables, telecommunications, travel and trade, fashion, personal care, and property development. Dr. De Asis has led and directed many brand campaigns that use strategy, new ideas, and creativity. The recent ad campaign in the Philippines employed an AI-generated image for the first time across TV, web, social media, and print ads.

Dr. Catherine Villanueva-De Asis graduated with honors from De La Salle University, College of Education, Taft Avenue, Manila, with a Doctor of Education in education leadership and corporate social responsibility. She graduated with honors from the Ateneo Graduate School of Business with a Master of Business Administration. Post-doctoral executive education fellowships in strategic marketing and leadership at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Silicon Valley, USA, in 2014; the Strategic Leadership Executive Education Program at Oxford University in London, UK, in May 2015; and the Strategic Marketing Executive Education Program at Oxford University in May 2015 followed her doctoral degree.

Dr. Catherine V. De Asis, an entrepreneur and leader, won three major prizes, including the 2003 Agora Award for Excellence in Marketing Education. She won the 2008 De La Salle University Outstanding Faculty Award and the 2018 World Women Leadership Congress Philippines Women Leadership Excellence Award. She taught in some of the best business graduate schools in the Philippines, such as De La Salle, the Asian Institute of Management, and Ateneo’s MBA Health program. She has spoken and taught in the Philippines and other countries. She also joined Positioning author Al Ries at the Philippine leg of the Asian Brand Strategy Conference in Manila. She wrote COLOR FOLDERS IN THE MIND: A BRANDING STORY, which was the first book on brand management in the Philippines.