Andrea Iffland: At Home in the Philippines

CEBU, Philippines - Andrea Iffland has truly come a long way from her native Germany. Growing up in Bad Orb, a small spa town near Frankfurt, she developed a childhood passion for fashion design. However, things developed differently and she took up Economics for her master’s and doctorate degrees in Frankfurt. She then spent a year doing research work for her dissertation in Tonga Islands in the South Pacific, leading to an interest in doing development work. Soon after, she had an assignment with the United Nations which took her back to the Pacific, this time to Samoa, a neighboring island country of Tonga. Together with her team, they covered four island countries, with Andrea mainly responsible for private sector development and grass roots initiatives. After two years in Samoa, she worked for the German Development Corporation (GTZ) in Tanzania, East Africa for six years, supporting micro enterprises and informal sector businesses. From here, she took a big step and moved from East Africa to South East Asia in 1999 when she was recruited by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in their Manila corporate headquarters.

At present, Andrea is the Lead Project Performance Management Specialist for the Central Operations Services Office. Her position entails running the capacity building program for ADB’s partner organizations and staff on how to design and manage results focused projects. This has taken her to all the countries in the Asia Pacific region, from Armenia to the Cook Islands, from Uzbekistan to Indonesia. She finds her job exciting and refreshing at the same time, providing her the opportunity to meet people from different countries and backgrounds.

Thus, for the past eleven years, Andrea and her husband, Mike, have made a home away from home in Manila. As a busy executive traveling all over the region, she unwinds through aerobics class and sports such as diving and golf. This year, she also took up a two-month class in fashion design at the La Salle College in Manila, revisiting her childhood passion.

Andrea shares that she feels at home in the Philippines since Filipinos make it easy for expats to feel welcome, due to our hospitality, warm-heartedness and openness to welcome foreigners into the country. She points out that she loves the shopping here. And now that it is Christmas season, in particular, her penchant for Christmas bazaars is at fore. She also enjoys the decors — especially when the coconut trees are decorated — and the festive atmosphere created by the Filipinos and has adopted this in her own home. Given all these, Andrea says that retiring in the Philippines is definitely an option she will consider. With her warmth, gentle humor and kindness, we certainly wish she would stay in her adopted country where she is truly right at home.