World's Most Famous Pinay?

Perhaps, she now holds the title as most famous Pinay face in the world, right behind Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and former First Lady Imelda Marcos.

Veronica Pedrosa embarked on her career in Manila as a TV reporter, presenter and producer for the Philippines broadcaster ABS-CBN. And by now, she has been the news anchor at the Al Jazeera English television network's Asia Pacific News Centre in Kuala Lumpur since November 2005.

                                      

She was really meant for bigger things. What with her British twang, Filipina looks, a UK degree, and that no-nonsense experience in broadcast journalism at ABS-CBN, she’s got what it takes to be there. And opportunity did bang at her flap several times. Veronica set off to work for CNN in Atlanta and Hong Kong as well as the BBC World Service and BBC World Television in London. While at CNN she was named Best News Anchor at the 9th Asian Television Awards 2004.

"I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time but of course it takes a lot of hard work too," Pedrosa reveals to Suzanne Schokman on Radio New Zealand. "Hard work, persistence and a willingness to step outside what is safe, prescribed or popular" are her success secrets.

She is the daughter of Filipino journalist Carmen Navarro Pedrosa who wrote a tell-all biography on then-First Lady Imelda Marcos that led to the Pedrosa family's exile in London where Veronica grew up. She was educated at St Paul's Girls School in London and Newham College, Cambridge. "I'm Asian at heart and European by habit," says Pedrosa. She reckons that her British accent is more understandable for people from Europe and the US and easier for her to understand what they are getting at. "I have the ability to shift between different cultures and perspectives,"she adds.

During her career stretching over 18 years, Pedrosa has brought viewers news on all the major global and regional news events and has interviewed a wide range of world figures including Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi, East Timor Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

She has also hosted a range of special reports and programs including dedicated Indian theme weeks in New Delhi and Mumbai and two special live series examining the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings and the killer disease, Severe Acute Respiratory Syn-drome (SARS).

She was in Auckland to speak at the Media Women in Asia seminar on September 26th, organised by the Asia New Zealand Foundation. "It is important that Asian women are seen in public professional roles in order to break chauvinistic stereo-types about what Asian women do, who they are. Because they can be everything!"