Ma’am Helen, our mentor

I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family and friends of my former college teacher, retired associate professor Helen Villejo Bañez, who died on Sunday, February 1, 2026, at the age of 86. UP Cebu’s official social media page described her as “a dedicated educator and administrator whose service helped shape the foundations of what is now UP Cebu.”

She served under the Humanities Division (now College of Communication, Art, and Design) during its years as part of the UP Visayas Cebu College. She also held key leadership roles, including chairwoman of the Humanities Division and Officer-in-Charge Dean of UPV Cebu College (1989–1990).

Ma’am Helen was my English teacher in the mid-1990s at UP Cebu. She carried herself with a quiet dignity, always composed. She spoke English with a certain “twang”, an accent she attributed to being educated abroad. But there was warmth in her presence, the kind that made a student feel that he or she belonged in her class.

Gentle did not mean soft in intellect, though. She was precise in her lessons, almost surgical in the way she showed us what excellence looks like. I remember one speech class in particular. Instead of merely describing what makes a great speech, she let us hear one. She played a video of President Corazon Aquino’s address in 1986 before a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

“The speech, delivered without flourish, or a moment's tremor in the voice, was first-rate – written, it is said, by Aquino herself, and rehearsed with a teleprompter,” wrote Mary McGrory of the Washington Post. Ma’am Helen made us notice how a voice can carry both steel and grace, how conviction can be delivered without grandstanding, how words land when they are measured and sincere.

Ma’am Helen could be sharp in the right moments too. She was chairing the panel selecting the next editor-in-chief of our student publication, Tug-ani, in 1996 when she asked one of the applicants, “You placed second in the writing-competition portion of the selection process. Why should we choose you instead of the first placer?”

That applicant was me, and I answered that the job of an editor-in-chief is to take ultimate responsibility for a publication’s standards and direction, and to oversee the editorial process. So I said I would make sure the best writer, the one who beat me in that department, would be on my editorial board and on the writing staff. I got the job.

There is a certain kind of motivation that comes from being told you are not the best. It bruises the ego, but it also clarifies. Delivered with an elegant matter-of-factness by your mentor, the truth lands quietly.

Those are the kind of mentors, I think, who shape great leaders. They tell you the truth with grace, put you on a scale where standards matter, and then leave you with a choice. You either sulk or work, but inspiring mentors push you to work. We need that kind of mentorship and leadership these days. Mentorship that inspires yet refuses to flatter. Leadership that knows excellence is built by humility and discipline, not by massaged egos.

In today’s attention economy, much of what passes for leadership is for show. Everything is optimized for applause, for the views. We curate appearances and call it progress, even when nothing is really built. And when real standards disappear, what remains are the consequences: traffic gridlocks, stagnant wages vis-à-vis rising prices, water shortages, and dead bodies when the waters rise.

But for leaders who truly deliver, I think we have mentors like Ma’am Helen to thank.