Janette Toral has been one of the most active speakers for the ProFora Media Lightbulb Sessions, being a passionate advocate of e-commerce in the Philippines, and the empowerment of Filipinos through the internet.

For today’s post, we’ve dug up some facts on Janette Toral in an effort to get to know her better.

So here are ten things you need to know about Janette Toral, our featured Speaker for today.

1.  Janette has been very busy lately, aside from conducting webinars for the ProFora Media Lightbulb Sessions.  In fact, she just started a new venture with Blog4Reviews and will be launching a complementary Internet advertising engine soon.

2.  Janette co-founded the Philippine Internet Commerce Society in 1997 and lobbied for the passage of the Y2K Law and E-Commerce Law.

3.  She is the first Filipino author published by McGraw-Hill Education Asia.  In addition, by publishing her e-commerce book in 2000, Janette paved the way for the birth of DigitalFilipino.com in 2003 that serves as an e-commerce advocacy, research, consulting, advertising, and training platform.

4.  Janette Toral started pursuing opportunities in the field of computers back in 1989 at STI-Kalookan.  She left in early 1991 as chief operating officer of its Taytay branch to pursue creative challenges- and we can see how well that has turned out for her.

5.  In 1995, she started speaking in major IT events about complex e-mail, groupware, and document management systems that paved the way for several columnist and writer stints in various publications.

6.  Janette is a recipient of the DTI/CITEM E-Services Philippines E-Champion Award 2008 for Policy Development following Senators Magsaysay and Roxas.

7.  Janette Toral created awareness about the Capability Maturity Model and Capability Maturity Model Integrated in the Philippines since 2001 that lead to the national government’s priority work areas for 2003.  She has been conducting CMMI related workshops since 2002 and trained around 200 companies nationwide on Software Process Improvement.

8.  Janette created the site http://www.cmmiphilippines.com in 2004 to promote the concept of having a Philippine Software Process Improvement Network (PH-SPIN) and advocate the adoption of CMMI in the Philippines.

9.  Janette also renders consulting for companies who needs help in training their personnel on various areas related to CMMI, develop software process improvement action plan, and in coming up with an institutionalized software development policy.

10.  For 2009, Janette’s advocacy focuses on search engine marketing awareness, blogging as a tool for Philippines 2010 elections transparency, the use of blogs & social networks for e-learning & e-commerce opportunities, and Internet content development by children.

In fact, you can come attend some of Janette’s webinars with ProFora Media:  there’s a series of talks happening for One Internet Day 2009 on Thursday, Sept. 17, and then there’s another- more intensive- series of workshops for the month of October: a Certificate Course on Search Engine Optimization Techniques (details on that course are here on the ProFora Facebook page, as well as here on this blog).

Cheers, everyone!