Ethel Agnes Pascua-Valenzuela

Dr Ethel Agnes Pascua-Valenzuela is currently the Chair of ASEAN AI Council and Advisor to the Passage to ASEAN (P2A) Secretariat. She serves as higher education expert in UNESCO, UNICEF and ASEAN higher education programs and projects. She was a Commissioner at the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) from April 2024- October 2025. She assisted CHED in crafting policies on Micro-credentials, Open Distance and E-Learning as CHED TWG Chair on Lifelong Learning and Technical Panel Member of Distance Education and Transnational Education since 2006.

Before rejoining CHED in 2024, she served as an ASEAN Education Advisor on the Future of Education at the ASEAN Secretariat and served as the first female Director of the SEAMEO Secretariat Headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand from 2019-2023. She currently advises Passage to ASEAN (P2A) Secretariat and Chairs the ASEAN AI Council (AAIC). She Chairs the P2A Executive Committee.

Outside of Southeast Asia, Dr Valenzuela served as a governing board member of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), the UNESCO ISCED-T Advisory Group, and the UNESCO International Teacher Task Force (ITTF). She is a jury member of the UNESCO ICT Prize in Education and the International Council of Distance Education ICT Prize of Excellence. She has helped establish and implement the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA PLM), the first regional assessment in Southeast Asia.

Dr Valenzuela got the ASIAN WOMEN Leaders in Education Award from Japan, the World Bank MTB MLE Fellow and the UNICEF Gold Research Award for SEA PLM in UNICEF Italy. She served at US IVP Alumni as Vice Chair for Higher Education and currently serves as President of the Pi Lambda Theta, an Intl Honors Society for Women Leaders.