biography

S i x t o   K.   R o x a s

Educated as a development economist, Dr. Roxas has been at different points in his life a labor leader, a journalist, a lecturer in Economics in New York at Fordham University, and in the Philippines at the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of the Philippines; an economist at the Central Bank of the Philippines and the Philippine National Bank, chief financial officer of a petroleum company, chief economic planner of the government and a member of the cabinet, the first Filipino president of the Asian Institute of Management, CEO of the Bancom Group in the Philippines and in Asia, Vice-Chairman of the American Express Bank in New York, Chairman of Amex Bank, a merchant bank in London; co-founder/ chairperson/ vice chairperson of some of the largest not-for-profit foundations in the Philippines, namely, the Philippine Business for Social Progress, Green Forum, Foundation for the Philippine Environment and the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, respectively. He is considered a pioneer in investment banking in the Philippines and Asia and is credited with the early development of the commercial paper market in the Philippines and the design and launching of the Philippine government's Treasury Bill market in the late 1960's and 1970's, and was an awardee of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for economics in the late 50's. He retired from investment banking in 1982 and has since been engaged in developing a system of local community-centered ecosystems-based management and accounting that affords stakeholders the primary role in their own development process. Since passage of the Local Government Act of 1991, he has pioneered the development of the market municipal bonds. During the term of former President Joseph Estrada, he was Undersecretary for International and Economic Relations of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

At present, he is Chairperson of the Maximo T. Kalaw Institute for Sustainable Development and the Foundation for Community Organization and Management Technology, and an on-call faculty member of the Southeast Asian Interdisciplinary Institute and the Asian Social Institute.