Dr. Ethel Agnes Pascua-Valenzuela currently serves as Advisor on the Passage to ASEAN (P2A) and the Chairperson of the ASEAN AI Council. She was appointed as Commissioner at the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) from April 2024 to Dec 2025.

Before returning to CHED as Commissioner, she served as an ASEAN Education Advisor on the Future of Education at the ASEAN Secretariat and was the first female Director of the SEAMEO Secretariat Headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, since 2019. From 2015 to 2019, she was the Deputy Director for Programme and Development at the SEAMEO Secretariat Headquarters. Since 2006, she has been with SEAMEO INNOTECH as a Senior Specialist in the Educational Research and Innovation Office.

Dr. Valenzuela’s early government career was at CHED, where she served as Director of International Affairs and Director IV of the Office of Student Services (2000–2006). She was also the Chief Education Program Specialist of CHED’s International Affairs Services from 1995 to 2000, during CHED’s early years. Additionally, she served as a UNESCO Education Commissioner and was elected Vice Chairperson of the UNESCO Education Committee from 2003 to 2010.

Beyond Southeast Asia, Dr. Valenzuela served as a governing board member of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) in Hamburg, Germany; the UNESCO Institute for Statistics in Montreal, Canada; the UNESCO ISCED-Teacher Advisory Group; and the UNESCO Teacher Task Force. She is also a jury member of the UNESCO ICT Prize in Education 2024 and the International Council of Distance Education (ICDE) ICT Prize of Excellence. She has developed micro-credential courses for UNESCO in 2022 and for CHED Transnational Higher Education in 2023.

As a passionate educator, she is a Professorial Lecturer at the College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City. She is also an editorial board member of the Philippine Journal of Education at the College of Education, UP Diliman. Additionally, she serves as the President of Pi Lambda Theta, the International Honors Society for Women Education Leaders.

Dr. Valenzuela holds a doctoral degree in Educational Management from De La Salle University, a Master’s degree in Science Education from the Philippine Normal University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education, majoring in English and minoring in General Science (cum laude).