Marie Diane Templo – Customer Service Representative

My name is Marie Diane Santiago, 32 years old and living in a beautiful country, Philippines. I am married and have a daughter.

I am a woman who loves to cook, watch movies and play online games – and especially loves to help other people. Cooking, you could say, is a passion! It makes me happy and satisfied whenever I cook for my love ones. Watching movies at home is what we do with the family during our free time.

Lastly, my outlet is playing online games. Whenever I am stressed out I play strategy games, first person Multiplayer. It may sound funny because we all know online games are a sort of distraction for some, however for me they are not.

I forgot to mention I am a pet lover. I love dogs! In fact, I can’t even remember how many dogs I have loved in my life, and I am sad to say they left too quickly, but are happy up above running circles in the clouds. Right now we only have 1 dog and her name is Kisses. My daughter named her that because this dog really loves to kiss our faces!

As a person, I am very loving and easy to get along with. I have many friends, but the true ones I can count on my fingers – and they have stayed true right up to this day. We still contact each other even though we have different lives.

The story of my life was never easy. There have been obstacles and challenges along the way, yet I managed to conquer all of them, with God’s grace of course. For me it was somehow inspiring because looking back it showed me that no matter how hard life is, I need to keep going and chase my dreams for in the end the only one we can lean on is ourselves. Though I had problems, particularly financially, I just kept going and kept Faith in God. I suffered from depression for around 4 months. I literally stayed in my room with the lights off and didn’t want to talk to other people, even my family. It happened when I lost my house (a big investment), my car and my business. Yet after those 4 months, I found a way to cope and began to handle things calmly, and did not depend on anyone or anybody.

Luckily I have my family who stood by me and supported me emotionally in all the things I did. I came to realise the things I had lost were just material things. What matters more is that I am still here, with a loving family staying at home with my husband and kids. This is why I am looking for a job that is home based so I can stay at home while working. This will allow me to take care of my daughter and husband while building my career.

When it comes to jobs, I worked as a call centre agent here in our region. I even moved to a different location just to work and support my daughter’s education. It was unbelievably sad needing to leave my daughter behind just to give her a better education. However, I realised it was not a good situation as my daughter suffered, and every day she cried. This really hurt so I decided to come back home and look for a better job, and hopefully one that considers workers staying at home.

I am not an experienced VA. I don’t have any background in that industry. What I do have though, is an experience in sales and customer service, and whatever job I may land – I am very willing to learn. I believe that skills can be learned, and I am willing to work hard to help the company flourish, and inspire other people.

I am so passionate about customer service, or really any role that allows me to help other people with their problems. I am committed in what I do. Life may have treated me unfairly before, but I want to remain pleasant, polite and behave in a dignified way. Right now I have to focus on my career. This is the turning point of my life. Getting an online job I know it is not easy. I have to go through a lot of learnings yet. But I am a risk taker and very determined. I know God always sends someone to help us in some little so we can reach our dreams. I always believe there is no sidestep to success; the key is walking from failure to failure to eventually secure success.

My life experiences have taught me how to focus on reaching my dreams and to do that I should start inside of me. I should stick with my motivation and goals. I want to be able to put all efforts into everything I do. I may have lost a lot in the past, especially time, but the upside is I gained a lot too: those “something to live through” moments made me stronger and whole, and taught me things about life that only experience could offer.

For a copy of Marie’s resume please click here.