What A Cracking Ice Floe Taught Victor Consunji About Business project

Most people’s epiphanies happen in a slightly less dramatic way than Victor Consunji’s, which sounds more like a scene from a Jason Bourne film than your typical ‘Ah-ha moment’. The property developer, construction heir and Filipino mega-athlete spent 48 hours stranded on a cracking ice floe on the North Pole in 2016, unsure if he would survive to see his family again. Unsurprisingly, it changed his outlook on life.

“Getting to the North Pole was straight-forward enough,” he says, breezily on the phone from Manila, describing his icy marathon. “I did a GPS reading, laced up my boots and set off. But there are a few major problems you face: the first is the actual running. When the temperature outside is -40°C, you are trying to keep warm, but equally you know you can’t sweat, as that ends with you looking like a popsicle and most likely getting hypothermia. Then there are the bears. But most of all is the fact the North Pole is made of floating ice.”

Consunji—who is the only Filipino to have run a marathon on all seven continents—had taken 10 days out of his schedule to sprint towards the earth’s northernmost point. But on his way home, he found himself trapped on some particularly unstable ice.

“The year I did it, the ice was particularly thin, and you suddenly realise that one wrong move can obliterate your chances of getting back to civilisation,” he continues. “There is nothing like feeling the ice cracking below your feet to put your problems back home into perspective. Most issues really are surmountable—but Mother Nature? That’s a different story.”

Twenty years ago those same ice floes would have been up to five metres deep. But climate change has thinned them considerably—and personally experiencing the dramatic changes that have occurred in the Arctic turned Consunji one of the most environmentally conscious property developers in the Philippines.

“Sitting on floating ice in a tent hoping for the best definitely makes you confront the reality of climate change and the fact that the ice caps really are melting,” he says. “We now try to be as environmentally friendly as possible—and make all our structures carbon neutral. We cut back on wood, use energy saving light bulbs, and have high ceilings for air ventilation. All the materials we use are carbon friendly.”

“But equally, we all have to be realistic about the fact climate change is coming,” he continues. “When we build, we are conscious of the fact that the buyers of today will want to pass on these homes to the next generation, and that the world then may be 5°C hotter, and that these apartments will have to withstand that.”

Consunji has business acumen in his blood. Born in the Philippines and brought up in the US, he is the grandson of the renowned David Mendoza Consunji—the chairman of mega construction company DMCI Holdings and a former government minister. When Victor was a graduate, he could have stayed in the US, or joined the family firm, but he decided he wanted to work on home turf and set up his own property company, which later became the Victor Consunji Development Corporation.

Read more at: https://generationt.asia/leaders/what-a-cracking-ice-floe-taught-victor-consunji-about-business