Raphael has been with the Center since 1999. He is currently Course Chair of iExceLL Course (Introduction to Excellence in Local Legislation) and is the focal person for the Center’s Local Legislative Program. He is in-charge of CLRG’s partnership programs with the Vice Mayors’ League of the Philippines (VMLP) and National Movement of Young Legislators (NMYL).
He has been the regular anchor/moderator for CLRG’s webinar-talk show series on YouTube on the COVID-19 pandemic response and the policy issues on full devolution arising from the Mandanas-Garcia Ruling.
He is the Center’s resident expert on federalism. He served as Philippine Project Leader for CLRG’s federalism studies and knowledge exchange cooperation program with the Institute of Federalism (IFF)-University of Friboug, Switzerland. He was also a Visiting Research Scholar at the IFF in 2008. He occasionally lectures on federalism at UP NCPAG and outside the university.
He is NCPAG’s regular delegate to Local Government Initiative and Network-Asia (LOGIN-Asia), a network of local governance stakeholders in the Asian region. He was a Member of the Board of Trustees of the UP Public Administration Research and Extension Services Foundation, Inc. (UPPAF), UP NCPAG’s contracting arm.
He has a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from the University of the Philippines; a Diploma (Federalism) from the Institute of Federalism, University of Fribourg; and a Certificate of Expertise on e-Learning Development from the Tele-akademie, University of Fürtwangen, Germany.
