Biography

Amina Rasul-Bernardo is the President of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID) and hosts the award-winning “She Talks Peace” podcast. She is one of three representatives of the Philippines in the ASEAN Women for Peace Registry. She is a member of the Board 
of Regents of the Mindanao State University (MSU). She chairs the Multi-Sector Governance Council of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity. She is also a Board Member of the University of the Philippines Foundation, Inc, Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Equal Access International (https://www.equalaccess.org/). She is a member of the Trilateral Commission. She was a member of the Philippine Cabinet under former President Fidel V. Ramos as Presidential Advisor on Youth Affairs, appointed concurrently as the first Chair of the National Youth Commission (NYC), which she organized. She has served as Commissioner of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women, Director of the Board of the Philippine National Oil Corporation (PNOC), the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), Founding Director of the Local Government Guarantee Corporation (LGGC), and the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA). She was a member of the National Independent Advisory and Monitoring Committee (NIAMC) for the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program, adviser to the World Bank Mindanao Jobs Report, a member of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) General Advisory Council, a Trustee of the National Movement for Free Elections, Trustee and Vice Chair of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF), a Trustee of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

She has degrees in Economics (University of the Philippines), Masters in Business Administration (Asian Institute of Management) and Masters in Public Administration (Harvard Kennedy School for Government). Her awards include: the 2023 Intercultural Achievement Award (IAA) for her “She Talks Peace” podcast from the Austrian Federal Ministry; N-PEACE Awardee 2019, awarded by UNDP; Most Distinguished Alumna of the University of the Philippines for 2016; 2015 University of the Philippines School of Economics Alumni Association (UPSEAA) Distinguished Alumni Award. In recognition of her work to strengthen democracy, she was awarded “Muslim Democrat of the Year 2007” by the Center for Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) in Washington DC in 2007, and she was cited as one of the World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims by the Jordan Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre. She was the first Filipino invited as a Randolph Jennings Fellow with the United States Institute for Peace (1999-2000).

She has written columns for Philippine newspapers (Manila Times and Business World), articles,
edited several books on the Mindanao conflict, Islam and democracy. Some are:

• Editor, Broken Peace? Assessing the 1996 GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement
• Editor, Muslim Perspective on the Mindanao Conflict: the Road to Peace and
Reconciliation. Published by the AIM Policy Center, Asian Institute of Management,
2003.
• https://www.globalasia.org/v6no3/cover/a-rock-and-a-hard-place-muslim-women-
andconflict-in-mindanao_amina-rasul
• Contributor, Gender and Islam in Southeast Asia: Women’s Rights Movements, Religious
Resurgence, and Local Traditions Susanne Schroter, ed. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.
• Contributor, Islam and Politics, Stimson Center. “Radicalization of Muslims in
Mindanao: The Philippines in Southeast Asian Context”
..https://www.stimson.org/wpcontent/files/file-attachments/IslamPolitics-Complete_1.pdf
•
http://dccn.org.ng/wpcontent/uploads/2017/09/Amina_Rasul_Role_Religion_CSID_Pape
r.pdf