Dr. Majah-Leah V. Ravago is the 10th Centre Director of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Center for Educational Innovation and Technology (SEAMEO INNOTECH). She is an economist and educator with solid leadership skills.

She previously served as the President and CEO of the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) and is currently on leave from her role as a professor in the Department of Economics at Ateneo de Manila University. She is an educator and has taught for almost two decades at the University of Hawaii, UP School of Economics, and the Ateneo de Manila University. When she was an Assistant Professor at the UP School of Economics, she concurrently held the positions of Research Director of the UPSE Economics Research Center and Division Chief III, Research of the Philippine Center for Economic Development (PCED).

Her diverse professional background encompasses leadership in multimillion-dollar energy projects, policy research, and a results-driven approach to energy economics, competition policy, natural disasters, and development economics. She served as the Project Leader for the House of Representatives (HRep) and the Ateneo de Manila University project, supporting the President’s 8-point agenda with evidence-based research. Additionally, she was the Program Director for the 2014–2018 USAID project, the Energy Policy and Development Program, which provided policy advice to NEDA, DOE, and the Senate and HRep Committees on Energy. In her role as Program Director, she coordinated various intergovernmental agency activities, including executive discussions with key government officials. She also acted as the Research Director for the US Department of State and UPSCRFI Gas Policy Development Project in 2019. Furthermore, she served as the President of the Philippine Economic Society in 2018, leading fundraising and coordination efforts for back-to-back national and international conferences. Before her government leadership, she had extensive experience as a policy advisor to government officials at NEDA, DOE, PCC, DTI, and the Committees on Energy in the Senate and House of Representatives. She also serves as a policy and research consultant for the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), ADB Institute, and USAID, among other development agencies.

Her research interests include energy economics, competition policy and economics, the economics of natural disasters, agricultural and development economics, and education and impact evaluation. An output-driven academic, she has published in international journals and has co-edited four books. She received the One UP Faculty Grant Award in Economics for Outstanding Research and Public Service at UP Diliman (2016-2018). The National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) awarded her the Outstanding Young Scientist in Economics in 2016. She is also a Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management (RIEEM) at Waseda University, Japan. She was also a U.S.-Philippines Alliance Research Fellow at East-West Center (EWC) in Washington, DC, a partnership program by the EWC and the US Embassy in the Philippines, from April to July 2023. She earned her BS in Business Economics and MA in Economics from the University of the Philippines. She obtained her PhD in Economics from the University of Hawai‘i in 2012 under the East-West Center Graduate Degree Fellowship Program. Recently, she earned a certificate in Executive Leadership Programme on AI and Productivity at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, in 2024.