From Pot Washer to Hospital Executive: Ryan Rabe's ETEEAP Story

Life aboard a cruise ship looks glamorous from the shore. Sunsets over open water, new ports every few days, a paycheck that goes a long way back home. Ryan Khimpy Rabe, who grew up in Malate, will tell you the picture is incomplete. His years at sea were hard work, and they started in the least glamorous corner of the ship.

His story is a good reminder of what ETEEAP is really about. Experience counts, sometimes for far more than people assume.

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Leaving school at 18 for the open sea

In 1999, Ryan was 18 and had stepped away from college. Several relatives and family friends already worked in hospitality, so applying to an international cruise line felt like a natural move. He got in. His first job was washing pots at Seaborne Cruise Line.

Nobody hands you a title on day one of a job like that. You earn each step, usually while your feet ache and your sleep schedule falls apart.

Fifteen years, many uniforms

Over the next decade and a half, Ryan kept moving up and kept learning. He worked as a dishwasher, galley utility staff, garbage collector, housekeeping attendant, bellman and butler. Eventually he became head concierge.

Along the way, his work took him to more than 60 countries. He worked beside colleagues from all kinds of backgrounds and learned how to create experiences guests would remember. By his own account, the career gave his family a secure and comfortable life, and that mattered to him as much as the travel did.

Think about what that kind of résumé really contains. Service standards, crisis handling, team coordination, cultural awareness. None of it came from a lecture hall, yet all of it is real, usable competence.

A famous guest and a path home

One highlight came in 2007, when Ryan served on a private 14-day Mediterranean cruise hosted by Oprah Winfrey. He has served plenty of high-profile guests, but he says her warmth left the strongest impression. The voyage went well, and more VIP assignments followed. That string of successes eventually helped him move into an executive role back in the Philippines.

He returned home in 2014 and became an assistant vice president and director at a well-known leisure and entertainment facility in Pasay City. In 2016, he took on the role of Director of Operations at a premier luxury hotel in Manila.

On paper, things were going well. Still, Ryan wanted something he did not yet have, a bachelor’s degree to match what he had built.

Turning a résumé into a diploma

That is where the Expanded Tertiary Education Equivalency and Accreditation Program came in. Ryan enrolled in the program at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, earning a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Institution Management.

The idea behind the program is simple, even if the process is thorough. Under Republic Act No. 12124, the government treats prior learning from work, training and everyday experience as something that can be assessed, validated and credited toward a degree. A deputized school reviews your portfolio, tests your knowledge and may ask you to demonstrate skills. If gaps remain, you fill them with additional coursework. If you want the full picture of how this works, our page on what ETEEAP is covers it in plain language.

For Ryan, the degree sharpened his skills in operations, service management and team leadership. It also showed him something he had not fully put into words

Photo credit: https://businessmirror.com.ph

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