Alfredo Pascual
"The 20^th UP President"

Alfredo Pascual assumed the Presidency of the University of the Philippines on 10 February 2011. He is 20th President of UP and the first to have been elected under a new charter, which was signed into law in 2008 (UP’s centennial year) and which designated UP as the national university of the country. The University he will lead during the next six years is a system consisting of seven constituent universities spread over 12 campuses across the country. UP currently has over 52,000 students and close to 10,000 faculty and staff. Prior to his election, Pascual was the President of the U.P. Alumni Association and a member of the U.P. Board of Regents.

Pascual is a finance professional who made significant contributions to progress in the Asia-Pacific region as an international development banker and educator. Working at the Asian Development Bank for 19 years until 2008, Pascual charted a successful career that brought him to senior positions in this multicultural organization. At ADB, he pursued pioneering projects and institution-building initiatives that helped the bank respond to the emerging financing needs of the region and catalyze investments in the region’s developing economies, particularly in the infrastructure and financial sectors.

Before becoming an international development banker, Fred was an academic and an investment banker. He spent 9 years devoting himself to preparing managers for Asia as professor of finance at the Asian Institute of Management. At AIM, he innovated by introducing new courses to better prepare students for careers in banking and finance. He also nurtured the Institute’s advanced bank management program that attracted many bankers from Asia back to school for skills enhancement. Very early in his career, he contributed to education by serving as an instructor at the U.P. Department of Chemistry for about a year. Right after his MBA, he served as a lecturer on a part-time basis for 4 years at the Department of Management Engineering and Department of Business in the Ateneo de Manila University.

For 8 years in the 1970s, Pascual was among the pioneers of investment banking in the Philippines, holding senior executive positions in Bancom Development Corporation, Philippine Pacific Capital (now RCBC Capital), and First Metro Investment Corporation.

After retiring from ADB in late 2008, Pascual has continued to be productively engaged by taking on occasional international consulting assignments. In addition, he has dedicated a significant part of his time to voluntary public service. For example, in the run-up to the May 2010 automated polls, Fred served as lead convener of the Automated Election System (AES) Watch, an independent, broad-based, and multi-sector coalition of concerned citizens’ groups and individuals that sought to monitor the preparation for and conduct of the country’s first ever nationwide poll automation.

(Photo courtesy of the Malacanang Photo Bureau)

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