The Roots Collective Team

As a community of entrepreneurs, founded by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, the Roots Collective is led by a dynamic, energetic, and passionate team! Learn more about them here.

Aloy Chua

CEO for Business Development & Co-Founder

 

 

Allister Roy Chua, or Aloy for short, is the CEO for Business Development of the Roots Collective, and one of its original co-founders. He discovered his advocacy for the environment at an early age by reading about global warming and polar melting, and has been taking steps to live a conscious life since his teenage years. His passion for social justice was also first kindled in high school with the cause of the Sumilao farmers, but it wasn't until the eve of his university exchange program that he was invited to the GK Enchanted Farm and learned about social entrepreneurship as a way of marrying social causes and career sustainability. He has been involved in the social entrepreneurship and non-profit scenes ever since, working as a facilitator and trainer with the same organization that brought him to the Farm and volunteering for the Benita & Catalino Yap Foundation before joining HABI Lifestyle in 2015, where the initial seeds for what would become the Roots Collective were sown. He served as the first COO of the Roots Collective until 2016, and returned in November 2019 to manage the Uptown BGC pop-up store, before becoming CEO in February 2020.

In addition to being passionate about living a more sustainable lifestyle and social justice and equity, Aloy is also an advocate of well-being, financial literacy, and living one's true purpose and calling. He likes traveling, reading, writing, cooking, shoes, video games, music, languages, technology, and coffee and tea. He is a director in his homeowners' association, as well as a member of the Christian Life Community of the Philippines (CLCP) and the Young Catholic Professionals (YCP) ministry of Christ the King Greenmeadows Parish. He graduated from Xavier School in 2009, and from the Ateneo de Manila University in 2013 with a bachelor's degree in legal management, and minors in French and Chinese Studies.

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Dexter Yu

COO for Business Development & Co-Founder
CFO & Co-Founder, Wholly Grain

 

Dexter Yu is the COO for Business Development of the Roots Collective, and part of the second batch of co-founders of the Roots Collective association. A lover of life and the beauty of nature and the outdoors, Dexter has been an environmental advocate since his university years when he joined the Institute of Skin Divers of the Ateneo (ISDA) and the Loyola Mountaineers, organizations that proved instrumental in his formation as a leader. For his business thesis, he and four other friends co-founded Wholly Grain, a social enterprise working with farmers in Ilocos to produce sorghum grains and sorghum products, which they continued after graduation, launching physically at the Roots Collective's Katipunan hub at the time. Having been recognized by the Roots Collective leadership as having great potential as a youth leader in entrepreneurship, Dexter was then recruited to be a partner at the Roots Collective association, and managed both the Roots Commune in August 2019 and the Uptown BGC pop-up store in November 2019, before becoming Business Development Officer in February 2020, formalized as COO in July 2021.

In addition to his passion for the seas and the mountains and sustainable living, Dexter is an advocate of holistic health and well-being, in particular physical exercise and healthy eating. He likes swimming and diving, hiking, jogging, yoga, cycling, cooking, good food, music, and design. He graduated from Xavier School in 2014, and from the Ateneo de Manila University in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in communications technology management, and minors in marketing, finance, and enterprise development.