Jose Victor V. Chan-Gonzaga
Mr. Chan-Gonzaga is Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. at the Permanent Mission to the WTO. Before assuming this post in May 2011, he was previously assigned to Geneva beginning December 2004, and served as First Secretary of the Mission until December 2010. Prior to his first assignment in Geneva, he was director for social development matters at the Office of United Nations and International Organizations (UNIO) of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and had earlier also served as director for human rights and humanitarian affairs, director for trade, economic and finance matters, and concurrently legal officer in UNIO. He has been a member of various delegations to international conferences, and has written extensively on international law and issues of legal policy, including on WTO law. Mr. Chan-Gonzaga went to Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar and a Bretzfelder International Law Fellow and, in 2003, earned his masters degree in law, graduating with the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar Award and with a Certificate of Merit in International and Comparative Law from the Columbia University Parker School of International and Comparative Law. Mr. Chan-Gonzaga joined the foreign services in 1997 after earning a Juris Doctor degree from the Ateneo de Manila School of Law, and was admitted to the Philippine Bar the following year. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Ateneo de Manila University in interdisciplinary studies with specialization in political science and socio-anthropology.

Lourdes A. Berrig
Since 1989, Mrs. Berrig has served as trade policy adviser at the Permanent Mission, mainly responsible for market access issues and trade facilitation in the WTO. A veteran of the GATT/WTO, Mrs. Berrig has served as chairperson of various committees of the GATT and WTO, a member of the Textile Monitoring Body, and continues to render valuable policy advise to both the Permanent Mission and the DTI in Manila. Mrs. Berrig also served in DTI in Manila from 1975 to 1983 doing work, among others, on ASEAN industrial integration. She has been a member of numerous Philippine delegations to international conferences and meetings, was a consultant of UNCTAD, and earlier on in her career, a teacher at the St. Scholastica’s College in Manila. Mrs. Berrig has a post-graduate diploma in international relations and development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands, a masters of arts in economics education from the Center for Research and Communication (now the University of Asia and the Pacific), and a bachelor of science in education from the St. Theresa’s College in the Philippines.