Ms. Alely Alejar-Bernardo has been serving as ADB’s Southeast Asia Department (SERD) lead focal point for overseeing relationships with SERD’s key development partners. She supports policy dialogues with these partners and resource mobilization efforts for project/program operations and coordination with SERD’s resident missions, sector divisions and with relevant ADB departments/offices on operational matters involving all facets of development partnerships – from knowledge, institutional to financing partnerships, including establishment and management of the Nordic Development Fund-supported Project Readiness Improvement Trust Fund. She has been supporting partnership strategy and programming at the country level in Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam; and also regional level, primarily in the Greater Mekong Subregion. This entails pursuing cofinancing opportunities for SERD’s 3-year rolling lending and non-lending programs, including efficient use of ADB-administered trust funds. 

Prior to SERD, Ms. Bernardo worked in various departments, namely (i) Programs East Department supporting project processing, portfolio and country economic reviews for Indonesia, Mongolia and the Philippines; (ii) Strategy and Policy Department supporting ADB’s work on strategy, policy and inter-agency relations-related matters; and on resource mobilization through the Asian Development Fund process; and (iii) South Asia Department where she was responsible for quality assurance of projects at entry; and mainstreaming of impact evaluation and managing for development results (MfDR) in regional operations. The latter included administration of a regional technical assistance (TA) to build MfDR capacity in Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; and a TA on rigorous impact evaluation of selected projects in Bangladesh, Bhutan and India.  

Prior to ADB, Ms. Bernardo acquired extensive experience on international cooperation, ODA management and public investment planning and programming with the Philippine Government, overseeing cooperation with (i) Asian bilateral partners (e.g., Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand) which averaged $1 billion of loans, grants and TAs annually; and (ii) multilaterals desk – overseeing Cabinet approval processes of policy-based and project pipelines with the World Bank, ADB and middle east partners (e.g., OPEC, Saudi and Kuwait Funds).

In between her work assignments at the ADB and the Philippines NEDA, Ms. Bernardo was a Researcher at the University of the Philippines College of Economics and Management. She was also a Visiting Research Fellow with the Japan Institute for International Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and Visiting Professor at Japan’s Nagoya University - Graduate School of Economics.  

Ms. Bernardo earned her Masters degrees in (i) Policy Science from the National Graduate Research Institute for Policy Science with Distinction (Tokyo, Japan), and (ii) Business Administration from the De la Salle University (Manila, Philippines). She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Agribusiness Management Cum laude from the University of the Philippines.