Travel, food, health, fashion, beauty, and more Lifestyle stories you love.
Travel, food, health, fashion, beauty, and more Lifestyle stories you love.
By Ron Lim
Photos by Sparkle GMA Artist Center and Claire Cabudil
The month of May was the end of an era for Sparkle artist Ahtisa Manao. At the start of the month, she handed over the Miss Universe Philippines crown to Bea Millan-Windorski, who will now aim to replicate or surpass Ahtisa’s top five performance.
But even as she’s ended that era, she was already two months into the start of a new one with Sparkle GMA Artist Center, where she signed an exclusive management contract. Since then, Ahtisa has made an appearance in Encantadia Chronicles: Sang’gre as Bathalumang Haliya. And during this one-on-one interview with GMA Lifestyle, Ahtisa expressed her openness to exploring her options in the entertainment world even more.
“Right now, I’m very open to anything. I’m excited to see what GMA thinks I’m good at. I’m also excited to do all the workshops. I’m just open to anything. Maybe for leading man, Alden Richards if given the chance. I also want to work with Marian Rivera,” she shared. “I also want to work in the news segment. Maybe something to do with economics. I feel like a lot of people are not well-versed in economics and finance, and I’m an accounting graduate. Feeling ko I can apply my skills there. If I can do something like that, I'd really like that.”
Truly, it’s been one era after another for Ahtisa Manalo, especially when you take a look at the journey she’s taken, from being a 10-year-old beauty pageant contestant to now being one of Sparkle’s up and coming stars.
As a young woman growing up in Candelaria, Quezon, Ahtisa already knew she was different. As the daughter of a Filipino-Spanish mother and a Finnish-Swedish father, her height and looks already made her a likely candidate for beauty pageants. However, what attracted Ahtisa to them was something much more practical.
“I remember I did it, because sa probinsya iba ‘yung itsura ko. Maputi ako, matangkad ako, so automatically, I look different. With the beauty standards na kapag mestiza ka, people think that you’re pretty,” she recalled.
(I remember I did it, because in the province, I look different. My skin was fair, I was tall, so automatically I look different. With the beauty standards, when you’re mestiza, people think that you’re pretty.)
“I’m lucky that I belong there, so I was able to do pageantry as a venue to help myself and my family. I did that when I was 10 years old because [of the] free tuition fee for one year. It was a no-brainer for me, to help my family and to help myself,” she added.
In 2017, Ahtisa would compete in her first big pageant – the festival-themed Reyna ng Aliwan, part of the Aliwan Fiesta organized by the MBC Media Group together with the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the cities of Manila and Pasay. Even now, almost a decade later, Ahtisa remembers it as “a fun experience”.
“That was my first national pageant and people representing their festivals. That was a really fun pageant, I must say, kasi lahat they’re proud to represent their culture, their heritage, what makes their provinces and cities different,” she recalled.
Reyna ng Aliwan would turn out to be a stepping stone to even bigger national pageants, as Ahtisa would then take on an even bigger challenge – the Binibining Pilipinas pageant. She would compete against 39 other candidates, one of which was eventual 2018 Miss Universe Catriona Gray. While Ahtisa would not go on to compete in the Miss Universe pageant that year, she would become the youngest candidate at that point to be named Binibining Pilipinas International.
“I feel like I’ve had responsibilities ever since I was a kid. So to me, it was just a different kind of responsibility. I took on that role wholeheartedly. I gave it my best, because I didn’t see age as a barrier to do well in anything in life, really. So, at that time, it wasn’t even in my head that I was the youngest. To me, I was just competing with everyone else,” she recalled.
Ahtisa would then go on to become first runner-up in the Miss International pageant that year. When asked whether she felt she was too young at the time to take on a daunting task, Ahtisa responded that she’s never second guessed herself.
“I don’t like second guessing myself or thinking I made a mistake from before. I think I did well. I ended up being first runner-up in Miss International,” she explained. “Of course, I was young, I was less experienced than I am today, but definitely, at that time, I was ready for whatever was in front of me.”
After taking on the Miss International pageant, it would take six more years before Ahtisa would take on the pageant world again. Her return to compete in the Miss Universe Philippines in 2024 ended with her clinching the second runner-up position and competing in the 2024 Miss Cosmo pageant.
However, it was her 2025 return to the Miss Philippines pageant that would really take her to different heights. She would prevail over 65 other candidates, and then head on over to Thailand to compete for the 2025 Miss Universe crown. And as every Filipino pageant fan glued to their television sets saw that day, Ahtisa would go on to clinch the third runner-up title.
More than five months since her time at Miss Universe, Ahtisa said that the only thing she would do differently is to hang out with her roommate, Miss Universe Panama, Mirna Caballini Bouche.
“If I could turn back time, I would just hang out with my roommate. [She gave me her support] when we were there. She was like a sister to me and we were just experiencing the whole of Miss Universe right beside each other and I couldn’t ask for a better roommate,” she said.
With her almost two decades of experience in the pageant world, there’s probably no one better than Ahtisa to share how it’s changed over the years. One thing that’s definitely stood out for her is how capital has become a bigger part of modern pageantry.
“Before, when I started doing pageants, you didn’t have to have local directors. Now, it seems like the pageant is a big business entity as well. You have to have a local director, who has to pay a franchise fee to the organization for you to join,” she explained. “Back then, when I did Binibining Pilipinas, there was no such thing. Before, you auditioned with ladies from all over the Philippines, from all walks of life. Now, it feels like you have to have a certain amount of capital for you to join.”
“Any time that something changes its system, especially to be more on the business side, there are people that will lose that opportunity just because they can’t access that,” she continued. “Because [when you don’t have money], now you can’t do pageants. Before, you did pageants [to make money]. It’s limiting.”
Ahtisa does qualify that she’s only speaking from her experience with one organization, and that aspiring beauty queens still have other choices when it comes to entering the pageant scene.
“The thing is, I’m speaking from my experience from one organization. But there are hundreds of organizations, local, municipal, provincial, that are not yet like that. So, I think if there is a way for us, for me, and for everyone to encourage and see that this is a platform to empower women and give them opportunities, because not everyone is given the same opportunity, that would actually be more beneficial to the whole pageant system,” she said.
Ahtisa also highlighted that today’s pageant organizations have made it easier for competing queens to get support, as well as giving them a support system that knows the system that they’re competing in.
“With the current state of pageantry, you get the support of the organization. Now that it’s systemized, it’s easier to get support from your own organization, and it’s something that they’ve experienced from before. There is value to them knowing the system and them just helping out the girl who wins for the year,” she explained.
Ahtisa is now taking on an entirely different challenge as she enters the entertainment world as a Sparkle artist, but taking on entirely different challenges isn’t anything new for her. She has managed food establishments Café Noun and Call Me Harris in Australia, and is also involved with the food brands Koomi, Oh My Greek, and Zig Foods. According to Ahtisa, getting involved in entrepreneurship is something that she’s always wanted in her life.
“I’ve always wanted to get into entrepreneurship because I know that creating value is the way I want to live my life. I’ve always wanted to be out there, create value, see how other people live, see what I can provide, and when that happened, the opportunity presented itself and I just took it. It just so happened to be in the food and beverage industry,” she explained.
Advocacy work is also something that Ahtisa sees herself getting involved in. She’s currently involved with Alon Akademie, which helps children develop global citizenship, social skills, and an entrepreneurial mindset, but she does look forward to creating something of her own – once she’s learned everything there is to learn about it.
“If given the chance, I would want to create my own, but I also understand that these are the actual lives of people that are involved in it, and I don’t want to get into something where I am not sure yet if I can sustain it and be responsible for,” she shared. “[It’s hard] that I get into something and then midway I stop because I don’t understand it. I want to be ready and I want to make sure that I actually have the knowledge, because it takes knowledge to help people.”
Given all that she’s accomplished, it’s probably only a matter of time before Ahtisa accomplishes this as well.
