Some people arrive in a new country with a plan. Others arrive with just enough courage to figure it out once they land. And then there are those who arrive after years of wrong turns, false starts, and quiet battles — people who somehow end up exactly where they were always supposed to be. John Paul “JP” Cosico is that third kind.
At 34, JP is wrapping up his role as Assistant Sales and Marketing Manager at The Global Filipino Magazine — a position that, by his own telling, came after one of the most circuitous career paths you’re likely to hear from someone his age.
A lost soul in a small island
It didn’t start in Dubai. It didn’t even start abroad, really. JP grew up in Sariaya, Quezon, and like many from his province, his first step toward a better life was a call center job in 2012 — where his first paycheck meant one thing: something he could give his family. “My happiest memory would be giving and providing for my family the best way I can,” he says.
From there, the path bent sharply. By 2014, he was in Macau working as a barista and bartender at a four-star hotel-casino — a long way from the Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication degree he had earned back home. “Hospitality business is way far from the course I took and finished back in college,” he acknowledges. He tried role after role, restless and uncertain, and the uncertainty followed him home in ways he didn’t expect. “I became worse finding the right career,” he admits. “Family couldn’t understand why… I wasn’t just sure of everything that’s happening.” He was 24 when he first put a name to it: existential career crisis.
The next stop was Bangkok, where survival looked like teaching English at multiple school levels simultaneously while also working as a server and cashier at a vegan restaurant in Sukhumvit. Somehow, between the exhaustion and the instability, something began to settle. He found footing in the FMCG industry, became a brand specialist for a top-tier company, and began travelling Asia and Europe. For the first time, things felt like they were working.
Then the pandemic arrived and dismantled all of it.
Dubai, and finally, solid ground
It was his aunties who moved him to Dubai. He doesn’t dress that up. “To finally end all the severe anxieties and depression, my aunties had to move me to Dubai,” he says plainly — the kind of honesty that takes a certain confidence to put into print.
What happened next is the part of JP’s story that his peers in the Filipino community in the UAE already know well. He built his network deliberately and generously, became known for his warmth and his willingness to show up for people, and eventually landed at The Global Filipino Magazine — a platform he describes as “acclaimed” and “most trusted,” and one that gave him the space to do what he had, without knowing it, always been working toward: connecting Filipino brands and stories to the world.
“Communicating to a lot of people, introducing Filipino brands because we are so proud of our native local brands, closing deals — everyday is a learning process so I always seize it,” he says of what he loves about the work. In October 2023, the industry took notice when he was recognized as an Emerging Marketing Icon.
His two mantras tell you something about the man: “Until it’s done, tell none” — the discipline of someone who’s been burned by premature optimism — and “Kindness is the highest form of intelligence” — the philosophy of someone who’s spent years watching what actually sustains people through hard times.
A restaurant named Florencio’s
JP lost his father in 2015, in the middle of one of the hardest stretches of his life. “I thought it was the end of our life too,” he says. “But it was only the beginning.”
He leans on Lamentations 3:28-30 as a kind of personal anchor — a Biblical passage about entering the silence, waiting for hope, and not running from trouble. “The ‘worst’ is never the worst,” it reads. JP has made that his own.
His plans after Dubai include moving to another country and, before any retirement, opening a restaurant-café he intends to call Florencio’s — named for his late father. It’s the kind of tribute that doesn’t need explaining.
For fellow Filipinos navigating life abroad, he keeps the advice simple: “Resilience and always be compassionate. Two secret tips to a better and healthy living.”
From a call center in Manila to the floors of Macau and Bangkok, to a desk at one of the Gulf’s most recognized Filipino publications — JP Cosico didn’t take the straight road. But he got there.
