28 Amazing Moments from the Last 28 Years

By: Proud TeamAsians, old and new

American writer Dennis Lehane once wrote, “Your first family is your blood family and you always are true to that. But there’s another family and that’s the kind you go out and find. Maybe even by accident sometimes. And they’re as much blood as your first family.”

In life, we will always have a group of like-minded individuals we call a second family, and a comfortable place we call a second home. In our case, we were fortunate enough to find both in our workplace.

TeamAsia, or TA as we call it, is our home built on incredible memories. For the past 28 years, we’ve laughed together, cried together, fought each other, made up, rejoiced as a team, won projects, lost pitches, and learned together — over and over again.

Come the week of May 11, our family began celebrating 28 years of TeamAsia. We took a trip down memory lane, and reminisced on some of the best experiences we’ve ever had since we started working here. Here are some of them:

1. Our first company photo! Our President & Founder Monette is with our first creative director, Pinky, and Mild Calingo, our first PR associate. Check out The Events and Awards Managers of Asia Limited in the listing of companies.

2. One of our Digital gurus, Andrei Carada, dressing up as Santa Claus for My Dream In a Shoebox gift-giving days in December!

3. Goofing off in our old office at Plaza B…

4. …and in our even older office in Southbay Gardens Paranaque City…

5. …which continued in our current office at AEON Centre!

6. Every single time our work lands on the front pages!

7. UberXL Launch in 2017

8. Globe Slipstream in 2014 and Slipstream 2.0 in 2015

9. LBC Endorser Launch aka the Kris Aquino launch in 2015

10. YouTube Fan Fest in 2016

11. Our random team field trips!

12. Jollibee Hotdog: Epic sa Sarap Campaign in 2018

13. Enjoying the food in Larsian, Cebu during the Infosys Leadership Team Planning in 2014

14. Women’s Business and Leadership Summit in 2019 entitled Women@Work: Accelerate. Create. Transform. (ACT)

15. Shell Business Centre Manila goes Glee with their Gleeful Holidays in 2010

16. Innovation Summit 2017 with Schneider Electric

17. Who’s Cooking? 2019. A 3-part culinary adventure by The Blue Leaf Events Spaces and Our Awesome Planet, where 11 of Manila’s top chefs and 11 of the country’s renowned caterers came together to produce 11 signature 5-course menus!

18. The calm before the storm. The “THIS IS IT” moment where you watch all your hard work come to life.

19. Project Blues Clues! All the hands of former to current TeamAsians forever at the TeamAsia HQ. We enjoyed shopping for and mixing the TA colors!

20. TeamAsia’s Annual Halloween TAkot with 3-time champions, the Content department!

21. Our annual TeamAsia Christmas parties! Every year is always a riot—always one for the books. We have our Red Circle Awards and our Funny Awards. One such “funny” award was the MAH and MIH award, which was given to the TeamAsia Couple of the Year (regardless if you were a real couple, or office love team). Catch: at the Christmas party, all nominees had to go up the stage and “copy” what our founders would do. And they would make Bea (our-managing-director-slash-their-daughter) host this segment. Always a very awkward moment for her, but she secretly loved every moment of it.

22. This is not a vacation photo. It’s a work photo. Our Experience experts, Abi and Pam, tested the kayak (neither of them have ever tried riding one, by the way) because they wanted to make sure our clients were safe when they did water sports in the resort. This was an ocular. They were on safety officer duty!

23. SEA Games 2019 with our Experience and Content department (#WeWonAsOne)

24. 2019 International Innovation Summit

25. 2018 geTAway: La Union edition!

26. Office pranks, need we say more?

27. Our brand new NLE wall mural at TA HQ!

28. Last but not the least, our birthday! Here’s a photo of our President and Founder, Monette Iturralde-Hamlin, with our former Managing Director, the late Michael Alan Hamlin, signing TeamAsia’s Incorporation Papers in Hong Kong!

The past two months have not been easy for our family, but the experience will be added to the long list of trials we’ve overcome together. Our experiences from the past 28 years have taught us lessons we’ll always remember as we move forward. Every pitch, every article, every digital piece, every event, every video and every design has filled us with passion and inspiration to think big and shine bright! We can’t wait to make a hundred and a thousand more memories with each other.

Happy 28 amazing years, TeamAsia!