Ging Geronimo, Co-Founder of Animal Empathy Philippines

From government to grassroots: how Ging found the most impactful thing she could do for animals

Ging Geronimo had built a career moving between some of the most influential institutions in development and public policy within various departments of the Philippines government and multilateral banks. She knew how systems worked, how change happened slowly and then all at once, and how to operate inside structures that shaped lives at scale. She was, by any measure, someone who had already found meaningful work. But meaningful and most impactful aren’t always the same thing.

Ging wasn’t actively job hunting. She’d turned down corporate offers that didn’t align with her values, and had taken on a consultancy role with the World Bank’s Farmer Registry Project during the pandemic so she could donate a portion of her income to effective charities. She was thoughtful about where her energy went, but hadn’t yet landed on what she could do specifically for animals. Then she came across AAC’s career path guides on growing the animal advocacy community in countries where it is small or new.

The profile reframed what was possible for her: not a career change exactly, but a recognition that community building in the Philippines could be one of the most effective ways she could help farmed animals. Other threads were pulling in the same direction: Julia Wise’s writing on her old blog, Giving Gladly, encouragement from EA Philippines to apply to EA Animal Welfare Fund. But AAC’s framing was the piece that made the professional case concrete – the evidence that she needed to move forward.

She decided to co-found Animal Empathy Philippines after running EA Philippines’ Effective Animal Advocacy Fellowship.
As co-founder of AEP, Ging is now doing the work of building the animal advocacy ecosystem in a country where it is still new, the kind of foundational work that makes everything else possible. It’s not the path she had mapped out, but the one that made the most sense when she finally had the right frame for it.