President Marcos has appointed a professor of the University of the Philippines (UP) as the new executive director of the Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM).
The appointment of Lisa Grace S. Bersales makes her the undersecretary for population and development or POPDEV.
In a statement, POPCOM said it is banking on the her expertise as a statistics development-partner of the country’s public and private sectors in crafting policies and implementing strategies for the agency.
"Bersales brings into POPCOM her deep expertise from almost four decades of academic practice as a researcher and professor at the University of the Philippines, where she was dean and director of its Graduate Studies for the School of Statistics," the statement read.
"As the first national statistician, she led the implementation of the Philippine Statistics Act of 2013 by setting up the Philippine Statistics Authority in 2014," it added.
Citing her background data, POPCOm said actualized the Public-Private Partnership for the Civil Registration System Information Technology Project-Phase 2 of the Philippines in 2016, and chaired Philippine Identification System working group that provided inputs to the Philippine Identification System Act enacted in 2018, where she formalized its Implementing Rules and Regulation in the same year.
"Her most recent significant engagement in the international arena includes being co-chair of the United Nations-Statistical Commission’s Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goals’ indicators from 2015 to 2017, which developed its global framework. Bersales has also written and co-authored numerous publications on demography and economic growth," the statement read.