Astrid S. Tuminez

Mary Astrid Segovia Tuminez (born 8 August 1964) is the seventh president of Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem, Utah, and its first female president.

Career

Astrid Tuminez was born in a small island village in Iloilo province, the Philippines. Though raised in extreme poverty as the sixth of seven children, she received a scholarship at the age of five to attend a private school run by Catholic nuns, along with her older siblings.^[1]

She credits much of her success and accomplishments to this pivotal moment in her life, and is passionate in her belief that education enables individuals to fulfill their dreams and maximize their potential:^[2]

A pivotal event changed the arc of my life when I was five years old. Nuns from a Catholic order called the Daughters of Charity began talking with my mother and older sisters one day. The Daughters of Charity ran one of the best convent schools in Iloilo City: the Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus. They had just established a free department for underprivileged children – and they asked my sisters and me to attend. They closed the free department a few years later, but five of us kept going and they didn't charge us anything. What did that education mean for me? From being an illiterate child, ignorant, malnourished and insecure, I became someone who learned to read, discovered numbers and devoured everything.^[1]

I was illiterate on the first day of school. In my school, the smartest child was put in the first seat, first row. The dumbest child was in the last seat, last row, and I was actually in the last seat, last row. But after a few months, I'm happy to report that I ended up sitting right in front – and I'm here where I am now all because of my access to education.^[2]

Speaking personally, education really is the great equalizer. If you grow up underprivileged, education offers you the chance to discover an entire world. You might live in a village or under a bridge in Manila and know nothing about anything, but education can set your mind free. Any time you open up a mind, you're opening up possibilities.^[1]

Tuminez first came to the United States at age 18 in 1982 on a student visa. That is when she began her study at Brigham Young University (BYU).^[3] She earned a bachelor's degree in Russian and international relations from BYU,^[1] a master's degree in Soviet Studies ^[4] from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in political science and government from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[5]

She was a program officer at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, focused on grantmaking in democratization, conflict prevention, and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Tuminez joined AIG Global Investments as a research director and ran the Moscow office of the Harvard Project on Strengthening Democratic Institutions, where she worked with leading reformers of communism.^[6]

As senior research consultant to the U.S. Institute of Peace, she assisted in peace negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Philippine government from 2003 to 2007^[7] and is member and former adjunct fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.^[4]

In her role as Vice-Dean of Research and Assistant Dean of Executive Education in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore), she trained more than 2,000 private sector professionals in leadership and organizational change^[8] in addition to leading marketing, fundraising, and grants administration for the school.^[9]

She is formerly Microsoft's Regional Director for Corporate, External and Legal Affairs for Southeast Asia, leading a team supporting 15 markets and more than $1 billion in revenues.^[10] Her role is to strengthen government relations, cultivate corporate citizenship,^[11] and enhance understanding of trending issues shaping regulation and policy, specifically drivers of inclusive growth in the 4th Industrial Revolution.^[2]

In 2013, Tuminez was named a Top 100 Global Influencer by the Filipina Women's Network of the United States.^[11]

Tuminez is a director of the Philippines' second largest bank, the Bank of the Philippine Islands, and boardmember of Singapore American School^[12] and ASKI Global, an NGO which trains and finances entrepreneurship among Asian women migrant laborers. She was ASKI's Chair of the Board until 2017.^[6]

As an advocate for increased global access to education for women, Tuminez delivered a TEDxChiang Mai presentation, "Dare to Empower and be Empowered", where she discusses the necessity of providing leadership and educational opportunities to women and lays out concrete steps for organizations to encourage, utilize, and sustain female talent. In various opinion pieces, interviews, and articles, she has stated:

The economic growth we have in Asia looks a lot less impressive when you consider that half the population is not realizing its full potential. Women are ready to do more and be more. We can be engineers, mathematicians, business people, educators – or whatever else we dream of being.^[1]

From a co-authored article with Philip Brett:

The communication industry in Asia Pacific reflects the same gender gap found in other industries. As a sector, communication prides itself on its insight into, and understanding of, modern culture, but it has found itself - and its leaders - in the firing line of controversy in its response (or lack of) to closing the gender gap and building a more inclusive working environment where women and men can thrive equally. The industry does, in fact, have highly creative and inspiring female talent. But their drop-off at senior levels, especially in the creative department, is sharp. This has created the perception that the agency world is stuck in the 1950's ("Mad Men," anyone?). But is the industry in Asia really stuck? How can industry leaders help overcome social and cultural factors, along with industry biases, in order to build a more diverse, inclusive and sustainable leadership pipeline?

To tackle ingrained cultural and social pressures, the focus for industry, especially when operating across markets, is to understand deep-rooted perceptions and attitudes at the local level. Despite global operating procedures and policy, local behavior, cultural norms and values will prevail. It is vital that an open and transparent discussion of these norms take place in, and across, organisations. But talk is not enough. Senior leaders and managers must invest resources and effort to deliberately cultivate, reward, and retain female talent. Critical attention is required especially during the child-bearing years for women. Progress must be measured. This is not a do-gooding project, but an actual strategic business imperative. Change must be driven from the very top of the organisation, and integrated across all levels, in all countries of operation. Leadership teams who develop an adept understanding of how their teams work - at their most local level - will be better equipped to help remove unconscious biases, change attitudes, and set their female talent - who have the ambition, passion and capabilities – on the pathway to rise to the very top.^[13]

At the time she was appointed UVU President Tuminez was resident in Singapore.^[14]

Personal

She is fluent in English, Russian, Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), French, Tagalog and Spanish.^[11]

Tuminez enjoys running and has completed one marathon and four half-marathons.^[15] She had 11 years of martial arts training in a system called Tan's Dazzling Hands while living in New York City.^[12]

Tuminez is married and has three children.

Selected publications

• Rising to the Top? A Report on Women's Leadership in Asia, A Report from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Asia Society, launched at the April 2012 Women Leaders of New Asia Summit, Shanghai and Zhenjiang, 18–20 April 2012.
• Russian Nationalism Since 1856. Ideology and the Making of Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 2000).
• Asia and the Global Economic Crisis, A Task Force Report, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 12 March 2009 [written with other Task Force members].
• Russia in Southeast Asia: A New "Asian Moment?" (with Hong, Mark), in ASEANRUSSIA Foundation and Future Prospects, Victor Sumsky, Mark Hong and Amy Lugg, eds. (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2012), pp. 43–55.
• Reframing Conceptual Approaches to Interpret Sex Worker Health (with Joseph D. Tucker), Journal of Infectious Diseases 2011:204 (SUPPL 5) S1206-S1210.
• The Problem That Has Been Named Global-is-Asian (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy), No. 11, July–September 2011, pp. 34–37.

References