Dr. Celia M. Reyes is the first woman president of Philippine Institute for Development Studies. She specializes in the field of econometrics and has conducted and published numerous research and policy papers on poverty assessments and evaluations of social protection programs. She is also the network leader of the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS), providing free technical assistance to local government units in the country in the implementation of the CBMS. The CBMS is a local poverty monitoring tool she developed under the Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic Adjustment Policies project. She has also served as president of the Philippine Economic Society in 2011 and has been an adviser to various national government technical working groups on poverty monitoring and indicator systems in the country since the early 1990s.
She has been the chairperson of the Technical Committee on Poverty Statistics convened by the Philippine Statistics Authority (formerly the National Statistical Coordination Board) since 2003, as well as the editorin-chief of the Philippine Journal of Development, PIDS’ multidisciplinary social science journal that publishes policy-oriented studies and researches on development issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Reyes is a cum laude graduate of Bachelor of Science in Statistics. She obtained her Master of Arts degree in Economics from the University of the Philippines and Doctor of Philosophy degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.