Wilbert Rivera Cantor did not arrive at marketing by design. He arrived by way of a Jollibee call center in La Union, a Greenwich Pizza reception desk, and years of grading English papers in secondary school classrooms. What connects those jobs to his current post as sales and marketing executive for Karat World Gold & Diamonds across its UAE branches is not a strategy but a temperament: the willingness to start over, repeatedly, without treating the previous chapter as a loss.
He is now based in Al Ain, where he has spent the better part of a decade moving through the emirate’s healthcare sector. Before joining Karat World, Wilbert served as marketing and business development manager at Al Raneen Primary Healthcare Centre and Stop Point Medical Centre, a role he took up in early 2024 and one he describes as his fourth pivotal position in Abu Dhabi healthcare. Before that came NMC Specialty Hospital Al Ain, where he was promoted to senior marketing executive after less than two years, and Medeor 24×7 International Hospital, and before that Universal Hospital in Abu Dhabi, where he held an unusual composite role — senior marketing executive, billing officer, guest relations executive, and coordinator of the hospital’s Kabayan Clinic.
That last title is the one that reveals the most. The Kabayan Clinic put him in direct contact with the Filipino community he had joined as a private tutor in 2010, teaching English to a single Emirati family for more than five years. As coordinator, Wilbert organized free medical campaigns, built working relationships with the Philippine Embassy, and coordinated events through the Bayanihan Council. The commercial function of the job — growing patient referrals — sat alongside something less measurable, and he did not appear to treat the two as separate assignments.
The pattern held. Through the POLO OWWA outreach program, Wilbert organized six outreach efforts in Al Ain, extending Philippine Embassy and MWO services to workers who would otherwise have traveled to Abu Dhabi to access them. In October 2019, Tawam Hospital and the Regional Blood Bank issued him a certificate of recognition for organizing blood donation drives across the city. He has served as adviser to FilCom Al Ain, the United Caregivers Association, and the United Filipino Community Al Ain, and as assistant treasurer and health and wellness director for the Bayanihan Council Abu Dhabi. He currently heads membership for the Philippine Business Council in Al Ain and the Western Region.
His academic record reads like an argument with itself. Wilbert began a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and left after five semesters. He began accountancy and left after four. He finished a Bachelor in Secondary Education with a major in English at Saint Louis College as a CHED scholar in 2006, earned his Professional Regulation Commission teaching license in 2008, and accumulated twenty-three units toward a Master of Arts in Education before moving to the UAE. Then, in 2021, he enrolled in a triple master’s program spanning Bath Spa University, the International Professional Managers Association in the United Kingdom, and Pole Paris Alternance Business School in France, completing all three by 2022 alongside a digital marketing course at the London International Studies Research Center. He passed the Certified Board for Sterile Processing and Distribution examination in 2023 and completed medical coding training at Newton Training Center in Al Ain the following year. He is presently enrolled in a PhD program at Philippine Christian University.
The awards accumulated as the credentials did. Medeor named him Director’s Choice in June 2019. NMC named him Employee of the Quarter in June 2022. He won the Toastmasters International annual speech contest in 2022-2023 after placing second the year before, and has collected best prepared speech, best table topic, and best evaluator honors through the PSME and Friends Abu Dhabi Toastmasters Club, where he served as vice president for public relations. He was recently named a Gintong Ani Awardee – International UAE, cited for marketing and business development, his standing as a licensed professional, and his certification as a specialist.
Wilbert speaks often, and by invitation. Maharlika Academy has hosted him repeatedly, as have the Filipino Institute’s Abu Dhabi and Al Ain branches and Richmindale Institute in Dubai. In February 2024 he addressed a gathering on family bonding and unity among entrepreneurs in Al Ain. His story has traveled through other channels too — a September 2020 feature in Filipino Global Magazine, an interview on ProXperts Media’s Unfiltered in January 2024, an appearance on the Talk to Chakoy podcast that May, and recognition as an exceptional alumnus in Bath Spa University’s BSU Connect E-News Courier in spring 2024.
The move from healthcare to jewelry retail is, on its face, a discontinuity. Wilbert has spent nearly ten years learning how hospitals acquire patients, and Karat World sells gold. But the skills he lists first when describing himself — problem analysis, partnership building, the ability to listen attentively and use tact to find common ground — were never really about medicine. They were about the person on the other side of the counter, whether that person was ordering a pizza in San Fernando or scheduling a procedure in Al Ain.
He is 43 now. The PhD is unfinished, the new job is weeks old, and the pattern of his working life suggests neither fact troubles him much.
