Esme Palaganas is a venture builder, creative strategist and researcher. 

With over a decade of experience in fashion and the creative industries, she advises lifestyle brands and FMCG ventures on market expansion and ecosystem strategy, translating cross-sector expertise into actionable brand, operational, and financial strategies.

Esme also works at the policy level to shape fashion and creative industry ecosystems. As Policy Chairperson of the Philippine Fashion Coalition, she has led the discourse on Filipino fashion industry development and played a key advocacy role in the passage of the country’s  Creative Industries Development Act. In this role, she also established a Trademark Help Desk for the fashion and design sector in partnership with the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines and Benilde.  In the private sector, she co-founded PHx Fashion Group—a company supporting Filipino contemporary brands through incubation programs, retail activations, and industry events.

Finding importance in knowledge exchange and thought leadership, she engages across academia, media, and global networks in the discourse of creativity, technology, and systems change. She’s a guest contributor at Vogue Philippines and Philippine Star., and has designed curricula and held academic posts at design schools and business universities including De La Salle University–Manila, De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, and SoFA Design Institute.  

Expanding beyond fashion and creative industries, she has ventured into innovation and technology. She served as an Innovation Consultant for a national government digitalization project, integrating technology into public service from monitoring to finance.  She has delivered lectures focusing on innovation and design thinking at University College London and Ateneo de Manila University Esme is a Chevening Scholar and Bayes PHD Studentship recipient, set to pursue a PHD on Intellectual Property Management and Artificial Intelligence at City University of London (Bayes Business School), She is a fellow of global organizations such as Salzburg Global (Art and AI Governance) and the UNCTAD eTrade for Women network.

Across these roles and affiliations, her work focuses on how creativity, policy, and technology converge to drive innovation and future-ready industries. 

Writing: esme@esme.world
Business advisory/consulting: team@ablankcd.com