Starpreneur awardee takes wellness revolution to workplace

CATHY Brillantes-Turvill

11 years ago, Cathy Brillantes-Turvill created a small personal space in the hills of Tagaytay where she could reflect and rejuvenate. Little did she know that she would meet her future husband Dr. Mike Turvill, an organic chemist who would help propel her small sanctuary of wellness to being named as one of 28 Most Relaxing Spas of Asia and be awarded with a Go Negosyo 2014 Starpreneur Award.

The latter was given to 10 other women at the 6th Filipina Entrepreneurship Summit held last March 7.

One of the pioneers in the Philippine spa industry, Nurture Wellness Village (www.nurture.com.ph, formerly called Nurture Spa) has since transitioned from being a spa to becoming a wellness resort offering accommodations, food, spa and wellness services, weddings and corporate events. Its growth and success is distinctive for staying Filipino-owned under the same management in the light of corporate foreign takeovers and entry of big multinational hotels characterizing the challenges facing the fledgling industry.

Success did not come easy. The on-the-job entrepreneur had to work hard for it, rolling with the punches and growing with the business parallel to spa enthusiasts’ journey to health and wealth. With the mushrooming of several spa establishments in the region riding on a wellness revolution, the Turvills knew they had to raise the bar of professionalism and lead in showcasing exceptional Filipino hospitality.

The Filipino-British entrepreneural partnership kept in step with big hoteliers not in matching their investments but in terms of education and global networking. Cathy supplied the empathy and person-oriented intuition to Mike’s facts-and-figures pragmatism.

“Women,” the Starpreneur awardee says, “bring soul and nurturing to the business. Empathy makes them look beyond the figures and connect the figures with real people.”

When her spa business was starting, Cathy went to school in Singapore and finished the Executive Spa Development Course conducted by US-based Cornell University. From her background as a Human Resources consultant and marketing professional, she went head-on into a new field, eventually becoming founding president of the Spa Association of the Philippines.

To consolidate resources in midstream, the couple co-founded the first spa professional school in the country which conferred international accreditation that would enable finishers of the course to work abroad.

Later as the burgeoning wellness industry was reaching saturation point, Cathy went to the United States to earn international certification as a Work Site Wellness Specialist and a Living Foods Educator. This international exposure led Cathy to put together what she learned as well as her Philippine spa experience into a book entitled “Turn Back Time: Natural Anti-Aging Choices.”

But it was a combination of her extensive background in training and organization development that enabled her to bring her Nurture Spa into the next level of corporate wellness by introducing a wellness-teambuilding experience called The Work Well Project.

The mother of two says she was responding “to the call of the World Health Organization and World Economic Forum for the private sector to help address the global epidemic of catastrophic illnesses like cancer, heart attacks and strokes.”

In the Philippines, she cites statistics from the Department of Health and the National Institute of Development Studies that show “more people dying younger and at their most productive years with heart disease and cancer, the leading causes of death. Studies also show that such sicknesses could be avoided if people adopted healthier lifestyles.”

The Work Well Project aims to assist companies to improve their productivity and profitability by helping their employees become healthier. Cathy emphasizes on the fun-filled and educational activities, listing seven components:

The first is a lecture workshop on what she has written in her book as the CHOICES model of health. Then, participants find out their state of wellness with what she describes as “state-of-the-art computerized health monitoring system” called Digital Meridian Scan. For the physical aspect, there are Tai Qi Gong Exercises aimed at increasing one’s energy flow through gentle, repetitive movements.

She muses about the fun part of the Work Well Project in the form of a Laughter and Dance Yoga,  which is a combination of dance, exercise, and, as described, laughter. Continuing the fun event is a Healthy Food Preparation Demo teaching basic principles of healthy but delicious food preparation. This goes hand in hand with a topic on Demystifying Food Labels to understand common scientific-sounding labels that are often artificial and bad for our health.

For the culmination of the team building event, there is the Eco-therapy Exercise Circuit where teams go around the garden on the exercise trail.

A direct descendant of renowned Filipino heroine Gabriela Silang, Cathy Brillantes Turvill brings her Nurture Wellness Village in leading the way to help the corporate world wage a modern day battle against catastrophic illness by arming people with education and introducing a new face of wellness: “Easy, fun and wonderful.”

On what keeps her going on in the business, the Starpreneur Awardee attests that real success comes with the satisfaction of seeing both her working force   and guests in a symbiotic relationship of raising health consciousness as well as their productivity, which boils down to raising their economic status.

For inquiries about The Work Well Project, visit www.nurture.com.ph,  email [email protected] or call (02) 4019030 or 09209505724.