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*Translations are unofficial and provided by Google translate
UN Women 2024 Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards:
Meet the National Judges
PHILIPPINES
Ambassador Delia D. Albert
She chaired the United Nations Security Council in 2004 with the agenda " The Role of Civil Society in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, highlighting the role of women as peace-builders and peace-makers. She received the highest decoration for diplomats from the President of the Philippines, the President of Germany and the Emperor of Japan. She initiated the founding of various civil society groups including the ASEAN Society of the Philippines. She published the book "Women in Diplomacy: The Remarkable Ambassadors in the Philippine Foreign Service”. She is currently Senior Adviser to SGV/Ernst and Young Philippines.
31 October 2024
Atty. Roel Arco Refran
Atty. Roel Arco Refran is the Executive Vice-President & Chief Operating Officer of The Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. (PSE).
Early on in his career, he was an associate at SyCip Salazar Hernandez and Gatmaitan and thereafter joined public service as chief of staff of Sen. Ralph G. Recto who chaired the Senate Ways & Means Committee. He also worked at ACCRALAW before joining PSE.
Roel passionately leads the sustainability initiatives of the PSE. In 2023, he was a speaker at the UN Climate Change Conference, Conference of the Parties (COP 28), in Dubai to share perspectives on how the capital markets can be an enabler for national programs for corporates to transition to a more sustainable business for the benefit of all stakeholders and help achieve the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for the Philippines.
He served as chair of the Capital Markets Development Committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), and he is presently the President and Chairman of the Philippine Fulbright Scholars Association. Roel is a member of the Commercial Law Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) and he serves as a Professorial Lecturer 1 in the PHILJA Corps of Professors.
Roel has been in the academe for more than two decades. He is a Professor of Law at Ateneo Law School and a Professorial Lecturer at the University of the Philippines Virata School of Business. He is an Adjunct Faculty at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) for its MBA and Master in International Business Law (MIBL) programs.
Roel is a certified public accountant and lawyer, having earned his accountancy degree from the University of the Philippines (Diliman) and his Juris Doctor degree from the Ateneo Law School. He later on pursued his MBA as a Fulbright Scholar at the Emory University Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, GA, USA.
UP Virata School of Business recognized Roel in 2014 as a Distinguished Alumni Awardee.
Just recently, Roel was conferred the 2024 Ateneo Law Distinguished Alumnus Award in recognition of his contributions to the academe and the development of the Philippine capital market.
Ermelita Valdeavilla
Ermelita Valdeavilla
Chairperson, Philippine Commission on Women (PCW)
The Republic of the Philippines
Chair Ermie was appointed by President Ferdinand R. Marcos as Chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Women in June 2024. She holds a master’s degree in business administration, bachelor’s degree in social work, and advanced studies in liberal arts, women and development, and social work.
Her work in gender equality and women’s empowerment includes 20 years as program technical staff, chief for programming and monitoring, and executive director of the Philippine Commission on Women. She also has 22 years of work experience with UNDP and UNIFEM/UN Women in the Philippines, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Nepal and Bangladesh. Her expertise includes women’s rights; gender mainstreaming; administration and institutional capacity building of national women’s machineries; development planning for gender equality; women’s empowerment in a situation of armed conflict; gender and governance; human rights-based approach; ending violence against women; UN staff satisfaction review; knowledge product development; strategic planning; cognitive coaching; and results-based management. She led the conceptualization and development of GMEF (original version) and conceptualized the initial wave of GAD focal point establishment across government. Her division’s work in combatting sexual harassment in partnership with the Civil Service Commission resulted in anti-sexual harassment measures in the civil service which inspired the enactment of the Anti-sexual Harassment Act.
Her division led the development of the first Philippine Development Plan for Women. Her technical guidance enabled the Ministry of Women in Afghanistan to develop the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan and to establish the first GAD data base in a conflict-setting. Among the papers and publications she authored were: Lessons Learned and Good Practices in Mainstreaming Gender Equality and Social Inclusion in COVID-19 Response; GAD Response to COVID-19; RBM Report Writing Tool for Beginners; Gender Responsive Local Planning and Budgeting; Breaking New Grounds for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality; Financing Gender and Development; Breakthroughs and Challenges of Making Government Work for Gender Equality; Economic Roles and Practical and Strategic Gender Needs of Women in the Philippines Water Supply Sector; and Making Development Gender Responsive: The Philippine Experience.
As Chairperson, she endeavors to strengthen the work of the PCW toward impact-oriented reporting on GAD Plans and GAD Budgets; incorporation of results-based management and human rights-based approach in gender mainstreaming, focusing on women and girls with intersectional disadvantage; institutional strengthening of PCW; development of the Philippine Care Economy; strategic norm-change to eliminate gender inequality and violence against women in Philippine culture; and a vision to establish a regional center of excellence on gender equality in Asia.
Matija Kovac
Matija has joined UN Philippines in 2023 from North Macedonia, where he served as the Head of RC Office since early 2020. He also supported RCOs in Sudan (2021) and Kyrgyzstan (2022) in the same capacity. Before joining the UN RC System, he was with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Af-fairs (OCHA) where he worked in the areas of humanitarian financing, coordination and resource mo-bilization in Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine and with the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) in New York. Prior to OCHA he worked for the UN in Sudan, had various short-term assignments in the fields of development and humanitarian response, and had worked in the private sector in Switzerland and Kenya. He is Slovenian, holds a Diploma in Political Science and Master’s degrees in International Affairs and in International Law.
Philip Arnold P. Tuaño, PhD
Philip Arnold P. Tuaño, PhD, is the Dean of the Ateneo School of Government, Ateneo de Manila University; he has been with the University for over 30 years in different capacities. Before his appointment as ASoG Dean, Dr Tuaño was an
Associate Professor at the Department of Economics where he also served as the Chairperson from 2019 to 2022. He was a lecturer at ASoG since 2005, and served as the Program Manager for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
(UN SDGs) at the Ateneo Institute of Sustainability. He was Program Officer and Assistant Coordinator of the Office for Social Concern and Involvement (1989 – 1995) and Program Manager of the Center for Social Policy and Public Affairs (1996 – 1999).
Dean Tuaño holds a PhD (2015) and MA (2001) in Economics from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He also has an MA in Development Economics (1996) from the University of Sussex. He obtained his AB Economics from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1989.
Outside the academe, Dean Tuaño was Director III at the Macropolicy Unit of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (2001 – 2004); Development Associate at the Peace and Equity Foundation (2004 – 2008); and Researcher for the Caucus of
Development NGO Networks (2009 – 2010). He is also actively involved in external networks as Project Coordinator for the Human Development Network (2015 – present), and was Acting Coordinator for the Sustainable Development Solutions
Network, Philippine Chapter (2016 – 2022). He is the immediate past president of the Philippine Economic Society, and is with the boards of the Foundation for Media Alternatives and the KASAGANA-KA Mutual Benefit Association.
Rissa Trillo-Mananquil
2020 Judges
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