Amina Rasul-Bernardo

Board Director

Amina Rasul-Bernardo is President of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy, and hosts the "She Talks Peace" podcast. She has decades of experience in peacebuilding, youth, religion, and development in both government and civil society.

Amina Rasul-Bernardo is the President of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID), and Trustee of The Magbassa Kita Foundation, Inc. (MKFI) which focuses on adult literacy. She hosts the “She Talks Peace” podcast and is a member of the Board of Regents of the Mindanao State University (MSU). She is also a Board Member of the University of the Philippines Foundation, Inc.

Ms. Rasul-Bernardo was the first Filipina to be invited as a Randolph Jennings Fellow with the United States Institute for Peace (USIP).  A member of the Philippine Cabinet under former President Ramos, she served as Presidential Advisor on Youth Affairs and was 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 representing Muslims, Director of the Board of the Philippine National Oil Corporation (PNOC), the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), and Founding Director of the Local Government Guarantee Corporation (LGGC). She was a Board Member of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), a member of the National Independent Advisory and Monitoring Committee (NIAMC) for the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program, and adviser to the World Bank Mindanao Jobs Report. Other functions included the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) General Advisory Council, a Trustee of the National Movement for Free Elections, and Vice Chair of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF). She has written columns for Philippine newspapers, including the Manila Times and Business World, as well as written or edited several books on the Mindanao conflict, Islam, and democracy.

She has a degree in Economics from the University of the Philippines, a Master’s in Business Administration from the Asian Institute of Management, and a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Ms. Rasul-Bernardo’s awards include UNDP’s N-PEACE Award (2019); ‘Most Distinguished Alumna’ of the University of the Philippines (2016); and University of the Philippines School of Economics Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Award (2015). In recognition of her work to strengthen democracy, she was awarded ‘Muslim Democrat of the Year’ by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) in Washington, DC in 2007, and she is cited as one of the ‘World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims’ (2017) by the Jordan Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre.