Alorica is reshaping its leadership structure in the Philippines, appointing Sarah Machan-De Silva as president of the country and Grace Taeza as chief of staff. The appointments come as the customer experience industry moves deeper into AI-powered operations, with Alorica positioning local leadership, employee development and digital transformation as central to maintaining performance in a market that represents more than half of its global operations.
The Philippines has become one of the world’s most important hubs for outsourced customer experience operations, and companies operating there are facing a dual challenge: scale increasingly automated services while maintaining the human expertise that customers still expect.
For Alorica, that challenge is prompting a new leadership structure.
The customer experience and digital transformation services provider has appointed Sarah Machan-De Silva as President of Alorica Philippines and Grace Taeza as Chief of Staff for the Philippines.
Machan-De Silva will oversee the country’s operations, client relationships, employee engagement and business performance. Taeza will work alongside her to coordinate strategic priorities and execution while retaining responsibilities within Alorica’s global finance organization, including operational expenditure management and other financial initiatives.
The appointments are significant because the Philippines is not a peripheral market for Alorica. More than half of the company’s global operations are based there, making the country’s operational performance closely tied to the company’s broader CX strategy.
From call centers to AI-enabled CX
Customer experience outsourcing has changed considerably from its traditional call-center model.
Contact centers increasingly combine human agents with conversational AI, automated quality monitoring, analytics, workforce-management platforms and generative AI tools. The goal is not necessarily to eliminate human interaction but to use technology to handle repetitive work and give agents better information when more complex customer problems arise.
Alorica says it has deployed AI-powered performance tools across its global workforce, providing real-time insights and customized coaching intended to improve productivity.
That approach reflects a wider movement across the CX industry.
Technology providers such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services are embedding AI into customer-service workflows, while specialist contact-center platforms are adding automated quality assurance, agent assistance and conversational intelligence.
The competitive question is increasingly shifting from whether a provider uses AI to how effectively it integrates AI into the operating model.
For large CX organizations, that means leadership has to manage both technology deployment and workforce adoption.
An internal promotion strategy
Machan-De Silva’s appointment also illustrates the continuing value of internal career development in a labor-intensive industry.
She has spent 23 years at Alorica, beginning as a customer service representative before moving into progressively senior roles. Most recently, she served as Divisional Vice President of CX, overseeing healthcare, travel, hospitality and entertainment accounts.
That career trajectory gives her experience at both ends of the CX organization: frontline customer interactions and executive responsibility for major client relationships.
In an industry where employee turnover, engagement and training can directly affect customer outcomes, that institutional knowledge can be strategically useful.
Taeza brings a different background. She has more than 31 years of finance, accounting and business leadership experience, including almost a decade at Alorica.
As Regional Vice President for Finance in Asia-Pacific, she has overseen revenue, gross profit, EBITDA, tax and accounting performance. She also leads Alorica’s global procurement strategy and has participated in company-wide efficiency and transformation initiatives.
Her chief-of-staff role therefore combines financial and operational experience with cross-functional execution.
Employee experience becomes a technology issue
The appointments arrive as CX companies increasingly treat employee experience as part of their technology strategy.
AI can reduce repetitive work, surface information during customer interactions and provide automated coaching. But poorly implemented automation can also increase monitoring pressure or make employees feel that technology is being used primarily as a surveillance mechanism.
That makes leadership and change management important components of AI adoption.
Alorica says 84% of its clients rank the company first or second in performance, according to its internal measurement. The company attributes part of its approach to continuous innovation and operational improvement.
Its employee metrics also point toward an effort to differentiate through workforce engagement.
Alorica Philippines has received Great Place to Work certification every year since 2022, based on employee feedback. The company reports a global employee Net Promoter Score of 75, compared with an industry benchmark of 50.
Those figures are company-reported rather than independent measures of overall employee experience, but they indicate the importance Alorica places on workforce sentiment as it expands technology-driven operations.
The Philippines remains a strategic CX market
The leadership changes also underscore the continuing importance of the Philippines to global business-process and customer-service operations.
The country has developed a substantial English-speaking talent pool and a mature business-process outsourcing ecosystem, supporting services ranging from customer care to finance, technology and increasingly specialized digital operations.
The next phase of that industry is likely to be less about labor arbitrage and more about AI-augmented customer experience.
Companies will need to determine which interactions should be automated, which require human judgment and how AI-generated recommendations can be integrated into existing workflows.
That creates a different leadership requirement from traditional outsourcing.
Executives need to understand workforce economics, client expectations and technology architecture simultaneously.
Alorica’s decision to place experienced internal leaders in charge of its largest operational market suggests the company sees that combination as increasingly important.
Community investment remains part of the workforce strategy
Alorica is also linking its people strategy to community engagement through its employee-led nonprofit, Making Lives Better with Alorica (MLBA).
The company says employees have raised more than $10 million globally since the organization launched a decade ago. In 2025, MLBA Philippines says it reached nearly 26,000 people through partnerships, grants and employee-led giving.
For large employers in the Philippines, community engagement can be more than a corporate social responsibility exercise. It can contribute to employer reputation, employee connection and local workforce relationships.
The larger challenge for Alorica will be maintaining that people-centered positioning while scaling AI.
Customer experience providers are entering a period in which technology can automate increasingly sophisticated portions of customer interactions. The winners are unlikely to be determined solely by automation rates.
They will also be judged by how well they combine AI, human expertise, operational discipline and employee experience.
For Alorica, the Philippines will be one of the most important testing grounds for that model.
Market Landscape
The global customer experience technology market is moving toward AI-augmented operations.
Generative AI, agent-assist systems, automated quality assurance, predictive analytics and conversational AI are becoming increasingly integrated into contact-center platforms. Enterprise providers including Salesforce, Microsoft and Amazon are competing alongside specialist CX and contact-center technology companies.
For BPO and CX providers, the strategic challenge is particularly complex. Automation can reduce repetitive workloads and improve consistency, but customers still expect human intervention for emotionally sensitive, complex or high-value interactions.
That puts workforce development alongside technology investment.
The Philippines remains a critical market because of its established CX workforce and outsourcing infrastructure. As AI changes the economics of customer support, providers will increasingly compete on their ability to combine AI infrastructure, skilled employees, client integration and measurable outcomes.
Alorica’s leadership changes therefore represent more than routine executive appointments. They place experienced operational and financial leaders at the center of a market undergoing a fundamental technology transition.
Top Insights
- Alorica appointed Sarah Machan-De Silva as Philippines president and Grace Taeza as chief of staff as AI transforms customer experience operations.
- Machan-De Silva brings 23 years at Alorica, while Taeza contributes finance and transformation expertise suited to increasingly complex, technology-driven CX operations.
- Alorica has deployed AI-powered performance tools providing real-time insights and customized coaching, signaling a shift toward AI-augmented rather than purely automated customer service.
- Employee experience remains strategically important as CX providers balance automation with human judgment, workforce engagement and increasingly sophisticated customer interactions.
- The Philippines remains central to Alorica’s global operating model, making local leadership critical as AI changes contact-center economics and workforce requirements.
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