Amina Rasul-Bernardo
Philippines

Amina Rasul-Bernardo is an education advisor to the Growth with Equity in Mindanao Program 2, a five-year development-assistance project funded by United States Agency for International Development. Formerly a member of the Philippine Cabinet as Presidential Advisor on Youth Affairs, she was responsible for the passage of a law creating the National Youth Commission. Ms. Rasul-Bernardo has a distinguished record in the field of business and finance. She was Director of the Philippine National Oil Corporation and the Development Bank of the Philippines, and Founding Director of the Local Government Guarantee Corporation. She is also a founding member of the Muslim Professional and Business Women Association, which encourages and assists Muslim women to develop to the fullest their potential as leaders. She has worked to develop mutual-guarantee associations among Muslim and indigenous women to finance cottage enterprises and small businesses. A founding member of the Magbassa Kita Foundation, Ms. Rasul-Bernardo served as the first chief operating officer, responsible for raising $2 million to support the foundation's literacy program for Muslim and indigenous communities. The recipient of numerous awards for her public service accomplishments and peace-building efforts, she earned a master's degree in business management from the Asian Institute of Management in the Philippines and a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has been a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace and a research fellow with Sycip Policy Center at the Asian Institute of Management in the Philippines.

Ms. Rasul-Bernardo's peace-building activities include:

• serving as the first Chair of the National Youth Commission, responsible for organizing the new agency and for the formulation and implementation of the Philippine Medium-Term Youth Development Plan;
• serving as a resource person for the Brookings task force on US foreign policy toward the Islamic world and the Washington, DC, East-West Center study group on international conflicts in Asia;
• representing Muslim women at the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women;
• serving as an advisor to the Philippine delegation to the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing; and
• coordinating the development plans for Sulu, TawiTawi, and Basilan, three of the poorest provinces in the Philippines.

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