As we continue to celebrate Women’s Month, we now feature two ladies behind successful Toyota dealerships.
Toyota, the number one car brand and the largest automotive company in the Philippines, is known for its high-quality vehicles with excellent reliability. In the Philippines, they manufacture the best-selling Vios and Innova models, two of the few vehicles manufactured in the country.
Toyota also puts a lot of effort into keeping their women customers happy by launching new vehicles catered to women’s needs, such as the Toyota Cross. It has been said that the origin of the automotive giant was inspired by a woman, Toyota’s founder Sakichi Toyoda’s mother. Toyoda saw the hardships of his mother as a weaver operating on a manual loom. Wanting to help his mother, Toyoda invented the automated loom, where Toyota’s journey began as a loom company before evolving into the automotive giant.
Let’s meet two of the women from Toyota who help the brand and its customers keep moving forward.
Jhoanna Lee-See
President and General Manager / Toyota Alabang
She joined Toyota Alabang 27 years ago, armed to help in the family business. But she wasn’t given preferential treatment and had to learn the ropes. Jhoanna said that an integral part of her upbringing is learning about their business. How to fill up the gas tank in grade school, to preparing collection receipts in high school.
After graduation, she started training in the dealership and is proud that she has experienced working in the different departments to see how they work. Believing that one cannot be an effective leader without having seen the people working on a specific function of the company first hand.
She learned that you couldn’t teach and improve what you have not learned, so she immersed herself in the company to learn everything about it. With this kind of mindset, Jhoanna was able to embrace sudden changes that will make her a better Toyota employee. Every day is a learning experience, and it made her improve the leadership style that helped her adapt to different situations.
In her 27 years of experience, Jhoanna experienced struggles such as culture building across generations in today’s digitalization era. But the lady boss believes that despite the shortcomings and challenges, she contributed to Toyota’s success by imbibing the spirit of service, building relationships, and collaboration.
Jhoanna’s tip to aspiring goal-getters like her? Keep learning, work hard, leave the world a better place and have fun while doing it!
Kimberley Cuenco
Group General Manager/
Toyota Cebu
Inspired to be part of the Legacy of bringing high-quality vehicles to Cebuano, Kimberley followed into the family business. A visionary, driven by compassion and trust, she plans to take her leadership up a notch by trusting her teammates’ strength because she believes that even the strongest woman in the world needs help too.
She was instrumental in making Toyota Mandaue North be part of the Year Awardees’ Dealer in her first year of being its General Manager. She was not afraid to make drastic changes to keep the market’s demands and molded a new culture for the outlet.
Kimberley struggled in challenging the perception that, as a woman, there is a limit to what we can do. But of course, she proved them all wrong. The 40-year-old trusts her team members’ strength, inspiring confidence and believing that they are capable in what they do, but also shows compassion in moments of weakness.
She believes that there is no limit to what women can do. “We were taught that showing weakness is a vulnerability. But it is in acknowledging our weaknesses that we become more capable.” Kimberley is proud to say that in Toyota Team Cebu, they have created a culture that no longer distinguishes female leadership because leadership is leadership, sans gender.
Happy Women’s Month!
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