When Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng founded Summit Media in June 1995, she was just 26 years old, armed with experience as a newspaper journalist and an investment of one million pesos from her father, the taipan John Gokongwei Jr. “We didn’t need much,” Gokongwei-Cheng said, looking back at the days when the company’s earliest employees were putting together the first issues of Preview, an local fashion magazine. “All we needed was a backroom, three old Macintoshes, and some really good editors.” With these tools, she set the foundation for a media company that would dominate the Philippines’ magazine industry, publishing titles like Cosmopolitan and Esquire Philippines, both licensed from Hearst. At the height of its print business, Summit Media had over 20 different publications, plus a book publishing business.

Today, over 25 years since it was founded, Summit Media has completed its transformation into a fully-digital publishing company. Having led this transformation, Gokongwei-Cheng has gone on to play a similar role for her late father’s conglomerate, JG Summit, where she is now SVP for Digital Transformation and Corporate Services.