Regional Director for Asia and Country Manager for the Philippines
WorldFish
Ma.Perez@cgiar.org
Maripaz L. Perez is the Regional Director for Asia and Country Manager for the Philippines of WorldFish. She has a post-doctorate in Research Priority Setting earned from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1990. She graduated from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines in 1977 with a BSc in Agriculture, majoring in Agricultural Economics. She completed her graduate education in the same university, finishing her masters in Agricultural Marketing in 1985 and her doctorate on Agricultural Economics in 1988. She has parlayed this educational preparation into a career spanning 35 years both in Philippine government service and since 2006, in WorldFish. Prior to joining WorldFish, Dr. Perez led the Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program (SET-UP) as Undersecretary for Regional Operations of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). As the first Country Manager for the WorldFish Philippine Country Office (PCO), she has built the team from an original staff complement of five, to what it is now at 33. Under her leadership, the team completed the USAID-funded project “From Reef to Ridge: An Ecosystem Based Approach to Biodiversity Conservation and Development in the Philippines” and the “Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability Assessment, Economic and Policy Analysis of Adaptation Strategies in Selected Coastal Areas in Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam,” among others. Currently, she leads the PCO research team in the implementation of the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (CRP AAS) that covers seven pilot communities in the VisMin Hub.
Session 1B: The Strategic Framework for AAS in the Philippines