Sec. Sonny Coloma
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SECRETARY SONNY COLOMA is serving his third stint in the service of the Republic.
He joined the administration of President Corazon Aquino in 1989 as Undersecretary at the Department of Agrarian Reform
to then Secretary Miriam Defensor Santiago.
He then transferred to the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) where he supervised the land
transportation sector.
In December 1990, he was appointed Head of the Presidential Management Staff and Cabinet Secretary while also serving
as Deputy Executive Secretary.
His second stint was during the administration of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada where he returned to the DOTC, this time
as Undersecretary for Maritime Transportation and for Finance and Administration. He headed the Philippine delegation to the
biennial meetings of the International Maritime Organization in London.
In December 2009, he joined the Noynoy Aquino Media Bureau as a volunteer. When the Presidential Communications
Operations Office was established last year, he accepted appointment as its first Secretary. The PC00 took over the functions
of the then Office of the Press Secretary and has supervision over all government media organizations.
He is the Don Jose Cojuangco Professor of Business Management at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) where he is
a tenured Professor and where he previously served as Dean for executive education, associate dean for the MBA program,
and director of the Master in Development Management program.
He holds a Master in Business Management (MBM) degree from AIM (With Distinction) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree
from the Southeast Asian InterDisciplinary Development Institute.
He also served as President of University of Makati.
Before joining the academe he was a senior executive of one of the country’s leading private commercial banks, where he
headed the corporate relations department responsible for dealing with the bank’s external publics.
He was also a President of the People Management Association of the Philippines and a past District Governor and international
training leader of Rotary International.
He wrote a weekly column in BusinessWorld for more than two decades. He is also a founding member of the Philippine
chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). In the AIM, he introduced an elective course on
Corporate Public Communication.
29 / THE PHILIPPINE PRINTER