Sandra Buenaventura

 I met Sandra at the recent get-together by MediaCorp to pay tributes to its pioneers. I was certainly glad to meet up with another old timer whom I had worked with for a number of years on Caldecott Hill. Sandra was then the Head of Programme and Scheduling unit and I was engineer in charge of the Master Control Rooms where TV programmes were delivered to homes via the TV transmitters. Being one of the professionals with the TV team under Cheng Teng Fatt she acquired a good many overseas TV programmes during the days of SBC. I knew her to be a no nonsense kind of manager who always demanded the best from her staff. When the company restructured into several component companies under Singapore International Media Pte Ltd she was promoted to President and CEO of TV 12 (the other TV company was TCS Television Corporation of Singapore).

To share more memories with other COTs here is a write-up with courtesy from Karen of the Corporate Communications Department of MediaCorp

 (Photo above: from left Sandra, Paramajit Singh, Michael Loke)

Reminiscing with …. Sandra Buenaventura

Sandra found her way into broadcasting as a secondment to then RTS from the Ministry of Culture in 1979. She was part of the pioneer team that revamped the programing content of Channels 5 and 8 as RTS evolved into SBC. During her tenure, she acquired foreign TV programmes and movies, scheduling of both foreign and Singapore-produced programmes, publicity, promotion and subtitling of all TV programmes on the 2 channels. She later launched Channel 12, dedicated to documentaries and the arts and became its first female President and CEO of TV12.

During her 17-year career, Sandra was part of the Senior Management team at SBC and became the first Asian to be appointed on the Board of Promax – a radio and TV international body based in the US. Sandra left TV in 1997 and joined Mindef as Head Public Communications.

 “The support and the patience and tolerance shown by my 300 plus staff for my raving and ranting. In fact they tell me it is payback time for me now as I have been tasked by them to organise our annual get together lunch for the past 17 yea Sandra's Quotable Quotes: "if you survive under my management you can survive under any boss rs.”