Robina Gokongwei
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Robina Gokongwei-Pe (born July 15, 1962) is a Filipino businesswoman who is currently chairman of
Robinsons Retail Robinsons Retail Holdings, Inc., trading as RRHI, is one of the largest multi-format retailers in the Philippines. Founded by Filipino industrialist John L. Gokongwei, Jr. in 1980, Robinsons Retail started as Robinsons Department Store in ...
. She is the daughter of late tycoon
John Gokongwei John Robinson Lim Gokongwei Jr. (; 11 August 1926 – 9 November 2019) was a Filipino banker, businessman, investor, and philanthropist. His conglomerate company JG Summit Holdings, Inc., had an extensive panoply of business and investment ho ...
and Elizabeth Yu-Gokongwei.


Business

Gokongwei served as the president and COO of Robinsons Retail in 1997 and then appointed as president and CEO of the company in 2018 before stepping down from both positions on January 1, 2025. She is also a director of
JG Summit Holdings JG Summit Holdings, Inc. (JGSHI) is one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines with business interests in air transportation, banking, food manufacturing, hotels, petrochemicals, power generation, publishing, real estate and property ...
, Robinsons Land,
Cebu Pacific Cebu Air, Inc. (), operating as Cebu Pacific (stylized in lowercase), is a Philippine low-cost airline based in Pasay, Metro Manila. Founded in 1988, the airline was the first low-cost carrier in Asia and is also the largest airline in the Phi ...
, and the now defunct Robinsons Bank Corporation. She is a trustee and the secretary of the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation, Inc. and a trustee of the Immaculate Concepcion Academy Scholarship Fund. Gokongwei formerly wrote a column at
The Philippine Star ''The Philippine Star'' (self-styled ''The Philippine STAR'') is an English-language newspaper in the Philippines and the flagship brand of the Philstar Media Group. First published on July 28, 1986, by veteran journalists Betty Go-Belmonte, ...
named ''Chicken Feed''.


Kidnapping victim

Gokongwei was once kidnapped in the 1970s, only to be saved later by a unit of the
Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group The Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group (MISG) was the branch of the Philippine Constabulary's Metropolitan Command under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos. It was responsible for maintaining peace and order though its unit ta ...
(MISG) led by
Ping Lacson Panfilo "Ping" Morena Lacson Sr. (; born June 1, 1948) is a Filipino politician who is a senator-elect of the Philippines. He is also a former police general who served as director general of the Philippine National Police (PNP) from 1999 to 2 ...
. When Lacson ran in
2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...
, she supported his campaign.


Sports

Gokongwei is a sponsor and patron for her alma mater's men's basketball team, the
UP Fighting Maroons The UP Fighting Maroons are the collegiate varsity teams of the University of the Philippines Diliman. The teams play in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), the Philippines' premier college sports league. UP is one o ...
.


Personal life

Gokongwei is married to Perry Pe, a lawyer from Ateneo de Manila University.


Robinsons Galleria urban legend

An urban legend relating to the
Robinsons Galleria Robinsons Galleria (also known as Robinsons Galleria Ortigas) is a Mixed-use development, mixed-use complex and shopping mall located at EDSA (Circumferential Road 4, C-4) corner Ortigas Avenue in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. It is t ...
flourished in the 1990s, which claimed of a half-snake, half-human creature that resided in the basement of the mall and purported to be a lucky charm installed by the Gokongwei family, feeding it with unsuspecting victims from a supposed shaft from a dressing room. Among its supposed victims were actresses
Alice Dixson Jessie Alice Celones Dixson (; July 28, 1969) or often misspelled Alice Dixon, is a Filipino actress, commercial model and beauty queen who was crowned Binibining Pilipinas International 1986 and represented the Philippines at the Miss Intern ...
and
Rita Avila Rita Ávila (born September 20, 1964) is a Filipino actress and author. Career She is a critically acclaimed film actress whose movies such as ''Stella Magtanggol'' (1992) and ''Tatlo, Magkasalo'' (1998) and ''The Flor Contemplacion Story'' (1 ...
. Although the rumor is now considered absurd and dead, it was revived in 2010 after a supposed
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
video depicting it surfaced. Gokongwei asserted in 2008 that the tale emerged from the "market competition". Dixson herself dismissed the entire narrative as fake, and in 2020 she finally put the entire tale to rest through a YouTube video. She had appeared in a videographic advertisement by the mall two years earlier, poking fun at and lampooning the extinct urban legend. On January 27, 2025, ahead of the
Chinese New Year Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival (see also #Names, § Names), is a festival that celebrates the beginning of a New Year, new year on the traditional lunisolar calendar, lunisolar Chinese calendar. It is one of the most important holi ...
which happens to be the year of the snake, Gokongwei poked fun at an urban legend in a
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
post featuring herself posing with snake decorations at one of the Robinsons malls.


References


External links


Robina Gokongwei-Pe (Director at JG Summit Holdings Inc.)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gokongwei, Robina Living people 20th-century Filipino businesspeople Filipino people of Chinese descent Tagalog people People named in the Pandora Papers 21st-century Filipino businesspeople 20th-century Filipino businesswomen 21st-century Filipino businesswomen 1962 births