SEVEN UST alumni have been appointed to key positions in the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and Department of Justice (DOJ), the Presidential Communications Office announced on Tuesday, Dec. 31.
Marie Charlotte Tang, a UST journalism alumna and former Varsitarian reporter, was named the Philippines’s non-resident ambassador to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
Tang will concurrently serve as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Republic of Kenya and the accredited Philippine envoy to the 11 African countries under the jurisdiction of the embassy, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Malawi, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Comoros, posts she has held since 2022.
A career diplomat, Tang became the first Philippine ambassador to be accredited in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia in October 2023 and March 2024, respectively.
She is also the Philippines’s permanent representative to the United Nations Environment Program and UN Habitat and a former deputy undersecretary for bilateral relations and Asean affairs at the DFA.
Tang formerly served as consul general in Guangzhou, China; minister and consul general at the Philippine Embassy in The Hague, The Netherlands; and junior officer at the Philippine Embassy in Beijing, China.
She obtained her master’s degree in Asian studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1995.
Meanwhile, several Thomasian lawyers were named to the DOJ’s National Prosecution Service.
UST legal management and law alumna Jennifer Maniquez-Montefalco was appointed Prosecutor I or associate provincial prosecutor for Isabela.
Also named associate provincial prosecutor was Almeda-Sakima Vinluan for Tarlac.
Jerome Coronel, a Thomasian lawyer and former deputy director of the DOJ’s Office for Alternative Dispute Resolution, was named Prosecutor II or assistant state prosecutor.
UST alumna Lyra Carissa Profugo, a faculty member at the UST Department of Human Resource Management, was named assistant state prosecutor under the same office.
Thomasian lawyers Rex Rojas and Raphael Seares were named deputy city prosecutors for Malolos and Quezon City, respectively.