About me

I grew up in Baguio, a mile-high hill town in the Cordilleras. Our family moved to Manila and I studied at Philippine Science High School, and then majored in Mathematics at  the University of the Philippines-Diliman. After teaching Math there for a year and doing MA Economics coursework at the UP School of Economics, I moved to Philadelphia and did my PhD in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. I then worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC for 15 years, working on Central and Eastern Europe (Romania, Hungary, Ukraine) in the European Department, and on financial sector and exchange rate issues in the Research Department. My longest stint was working on the Fund's flagship publication, the World Economic Outlook, from 2009-2015—an exciting time for the global economy.  In 2015 I moved to the Asian Development Bank in Manila, serving first as Economic Advisor and from 2019 as Director of Macroeconomic Research. I monitor developments, the outlook, and risks for ADB's 46 developing member economies, and oversee the ADB's flagship publication, the Asian Development Outlook.