Eins' profile

INES MIRANDA BASAEN

Ines, who is fondly called “Eins”, was born in Camp Allen, Baguio City in the Philippines during the coldest month, January, grew up and lived in the same camp for almost 25 years until her father retired from the Philippine Military Academy. She was one of the very few ladies accepted into the Academy in the 70s to teach (chemistry and physics) before moving to St. Louis University where she taught mathematics, chemistry, and chemical engineering subjects in the College of Engineering.

She is a registered chemical engineer and with 2 masters degrees, Master of Engineering (chemical engineering) and Master in Engineering Education from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City). Aside from having completed a six-month course in Computer Science, excelling as a programmer and systems analyst/designer, Eins completed her Ph.D. in Education major in research and evaluation from the same university. She is currently enrolled in her second doctorate degree in Public Administration at the National College of Public Administration and Governance of the University of the Philippines.

She left Baguio City in 1980 to work under the Asian Development Bank Engineering Education Project, particularly, to manage the National Engineering Education Program, which significantly reformed the engineering education system in the country from 1980 to 1986. She supervised the Technical Panel for Engineering Education Secretariat, which was then responsible for the implementation of the project, particularly, training of engineering teachers, acquisition of modern engineering education facilities, construction of engineering school buildings, and development of industry-responsive engineering curricula. Notably, this Technical Panel served as model for the establishment of future technical panels of the Commission on Higher Education.

After the historic EDSA revolution in 1986, Eins shifted gears from the highly technical world to the social development sector by first working with the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) which opened her world to social development work that caught the attention of a ranking official of the United Nations in the Philippines. She was then hired in 1987 as a Consultant for monitoring and evaluation to the UNICEF for the Country Programme for Children (full-time under CPC III and a few times in CPC IV and CPC V); continued under the UNDP in 1990 as a Consultant for participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation systems for low-income housing program for the urban poor and in 1995, as the Country Coordinator for Agenda 21 for Sustainable Development . This was followed by her stint with the International Labour Organization in mid 1996 as the National Coordinator for Community-Based Environmental Impact Assessment Program working with indigenous peoples in the country. In 1998, she was hired as the Asia-Pacific Manager of the Earth Council reporting to the headquarters in Costa Rica.

Interspersed with her United Nations work as consultant, she was also a regular consultant in the areas of strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, organizational and human resource development of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies particularly assigned in member-countries in the Asia-Pacific; Disabled Persons International in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada as well as with other national and international NGOs. She was also the Asia-Pacific Manager of the International Disability Rights Monitoring Project of the Center for International Rehabilitation based in Chicago, U.S.A. from 2003-2005.

After almost 12 years of engagement as a consultant, principal evaluator, trainer, writer and resource person under international agencies and organizations in at least 25 countries, she got back to her first interest which is information technology, and became the Vice President for Territory Corporate Operations of Informatics Philippines and concurrently the Vice President for Academics from 2000-2002.

In mid 2002, she left Informatics to respond to a call for humanitarian work in war-ravaged countries. She worked in Cambodia as consultant for monitoring and evaluation to the Cambodia Red Cross, followed by her appointment by the Embassy of Finland in Indonesia to work in East Timor to help organize the people with disabilities and a few victims of war from June to December 2002.

In 2003, she was called by the UNICEF and the European Union to be the management consultant for the National Salt Iodization Program and the Women’s Health and Safe Motherhood Program, respectively. For both programs, she was tasked to help accelerate attainment of national development goals since both programs were already experiencing implementation lags. To her colleagues in the UN agencies like UNICEF, UNDP and some social development agencies of the government such as the Department of Health, Eins gained the reputation of being an effective “troubleshooter”, coming in at the right moments with creative ideas to help address weaknesses, problems and snags in management and operations.

Uniquely and a surprise to her friends in the nongovernment sector, she was appointed as the Deputy Special Envoy on Transnational Crime under the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines from 2005-2006, after serving this office as consultant in 2004. In October 2007, she was asked to help the same office as part-time consultant. She continues to assist nongovernment organizations, the academe and the private business sector in the areas of strategic planning, organizational development, research and evaluation, program/project development and resource mobilization.

Despite her usual heavy workload, Eins continues to volunteer for the Red Cross movement and other humanitarian and cause-oriented groups advocating good governance, good citizenship values, poverty reduction, education for all and protection and conservation of the environment.


Engr. Ines M. Basaen, Ph.D.
+639178293991 (mobile phone no.)
email address: ibasaen@gmail.com