ZAMBOANGA CITY – The Zamboanga City Council, during its regular session last Monday, May 27, commended a former Ateneo de Zamboanga University scholar who graduated cum laude from Harvard University in the United States while working at Google, a leading US technology company.
MARTIN (Productschool.com)
Raiza Abubakar-Martin earned a degree in Economics minor in government. She enrolled at the prestigious university while working as a senior product manager at Google.
Councilor Gerky Valesco, proponent of the resolution, said Martin should be honored for serving as an inspiration to the youth.
Martin said the hardest part of her journey was studying and shuttling to and from Boston, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California, her home base, while working a demanding job at Google.
She credits her success, however, to a strong support system composed of her family and a competitive and encouraging work culture at Google.
Martin was a scholar at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University who migrated to the United States with her family in 2006 before finishing her college degree.
As a student here, she was awarded by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund and the Asian Institute of Journalism as Outstanding Youth Writer.
She is the senior product manager behind Notebook LM, a personalized AI Google tool now being used in the United States and which will soon be launched internationally, including the Philippines.