BIZ BUZZ: Welcome home, Secretary De Leon!
The celebratory hangover is far from over for newly minted Budget Secretary Kim Robert de Leon.
It was a homecoming of sorts at the University of the Philippines (UP) on June 2, as the academe welcomed the 32-year-old back to Diliman, filling its halls with institutional pride as faculty, peers, and officials gathered in support of their faculty-member-turned-Cabinet-official.
De Leon is no stranger to excellence, graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Public Administration degree from the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG) in 2014.
He also holds a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the UPD School of Urban and Regional Planning, eventually coming full circle to teach at his alma mater in 2019.
So it’s no surprise that the university’s heavyweights—including UP president Angelo Jimenez, UP vice president for planning and finance Joselito Florendo, and NCPAG dean Kristoffer Berse—were practically beaming the entire night.
But De Leon, while expressing gratitude to the university for his education and formative years in public service, made clear that the spotlight was never meant to rest on him alone.
“When it was officially announced, it was very clear that this is not, and will never be, about me. This is about the struggles of Filipinos every day: the effects of inflation felt by households; the challenges of students and their competitiveness in this fast-paced and technology-driven time,” he said.
For a man tasked with holding the nation’s purse strings, the young secretary is already proving he has what it takes to match his heavy fiscal responsibilities.
Also in his speech, De Leon quipped: “Dapat walang kalihim, dahil walang lihim.”
Surely, the Diliman crowd is betting big that their star academic won’t just keep the economy afloat, but will actually revamp the Philippine national budget.
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