Cadapan-Antonio accepted at Harvard

Cadapan-Antonio accepted at Harvard

Young lawyer and former City Councilor Myrish Cadapan-Antonio has been offered admission to the Harvard Kennedy School as a member of the one-year Mid-Career Master in Public Administration Edward S. Mason Fellow program for the class of 2014.

In a letter, Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood asked Cadapan-Antonio to “join an exceptional group of people by answering the echo of President John F. Kennedy’s call to ‘ask what you can do’.”

The Kennedy School Dean told Cadapan-Antonio in his letter that she is among the talented and diverse group of about 80 leaders they had singled out, on the basis of their intelligence, leadership, and commitment.

Cadapan-Antonio, who is director of the SU Salonga Center for Law & Development and member of the EdLaw Firm, said she has decided to accept the challenge at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The young lawyer finished her Master of Laws (in Government Procurement) as a Fulbright scholar from the George Washington Law School in Washington DC where she received the Most Outstanding International LLM Award. She also got several scholarships and trainings in Global Integrity & Strategic Corruption Control, International Human Rights, and International Humanitarian Law in Hungary, France, and Germany. She currently teaches at the SU College of Law.

At Harvard, Cadapan-Antonio expects to be challenged, supported, and empowered by the faculty and the curriculum, by the opportunities provided outside the classroom, and by her fellow students “with impressive academic capacity and leadership prowess”. A typical Mason class includes experienced professionals who have assumed leadership roles in education, energy, defense, housing, transportation, foreign affairs, public enterprise, rural and urban development, environmental preservation, central banking, journalism, politics, and economic planning.

The Mason Program is the Harvard Kennedy School’s flagship international program, with emphasis on developing the broad range of analytical and leadership skills required to initiate and implement major political, social or economic change.

Mason fellows also participate in a year-long co-curricular program that complements the MPA by exposing them to the ideas and strategies of leading thinkers and practitioners in economic, political, and social development. Participation in the co-curricular program is a requirement for the Mason Fellows and culminates with the award of the Mason Certificate in Public Policy & Management at the end of the year in addition to the MPA.

The diverse alumni at the Harvard Kennedy School include heads of multinational organizations like the World Bank. They are mayors and ministers and legislators. They work in emerging nations or inner cities. They are social entrepreneurs and they are policymakers. They lead in government, in civil society, and in business. Among the Filipinos who graduated with degrees at the Kennedy School include former DILG Sec. Jesse Robredo and Sen. Francis Pangilinan. (PR)