Former Finance secretary Margarito “Gary” B. Teves, chairman of business and economic consulting firm Think Tank Inc., recently received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Teves, a Master’s graduate of the Williams College Center for Development Economics (CDE) in 1968, was cited by his alma mater for his life of public service in the Philippines.

“Williams and the CDE take pride in all of [your] accomplishments and in your being known as refreshingly humble for so public a figure and as such an able explainer of complex issues to the public that you have so devotedly served,” said Williams College president Adam Falk during the just concluded commencement exercise, where Teves received his honorary doctorate.

In citing the achievements of the former legislator and Cabinet member, Falk noted Teves’s election to the Constitutional Convention in 1971; his 11 years in Congress where he promoted legislation to reform banking and finance, increase investment from overseas, and build competitiveness while establishing economic safety nets; his almost five years as president of the government-owned Land Bank of the Philippines where he helped focus resources on small farms and fisheries and for returning the bank to its mandate and to profitability; and his term as the country’s second longest-serving Finance Secretary, during which time the Philippine economy achieved one of the highest GDP growth rates in more than 30 years.

In a dinner-toast held on June 4 also at Williams, Prof. Jerry Caprio, chairman of the executive committee of what is now known as the Williams Center for Policy Economics, also recognized Teves’s long record of public service.

“To me, the most important facet of Gary’s career that you should know about is that he has served as a great example of public service in the Philippines. As is the case in many countries, it can be hard to attract good people to government service, but Gary, through his sincerity, his honesty, and his commitment to doing the best possible job for his country, has inspired many to enter public service, at home and abroad.  And borrowing directly from Gary, and Frank Sinatra, I guess that you would have to say, ‘He did it his way,’” Caprio said.

He added: “The founders of the Center would have been absolutely ecstatic had they known that one of their alumni would be Gary Teves.”

Teves was educated in Spain, England and the United States. He earned the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from the City of London College in England, and a Master’s degree in Development Economics from the Center of Development Economics at Williams College.

Upon his return to the Philippines, he joined the Bank of Asia and subsequently, the Presidential Economic Staff, the predecessor of the National Economic and Development Authority. He was later elected as a delegate to the 1971-1972 Constitutional Convention.

After stints in the private sector, for organizations such as the Tolong Sugar Milling Corp., Ayala Corp. and the Ayala Foundation, and teaching Economics to MBA students at the Ateneo de Manila University until 1984, he was elected to represent the 3rd district of Negros Oriental in Congress for three consecutive terms, from 1987 to 1998, authoring important legislation on trade, investment, fiscal and financial reform, and most notably, the law that liberalized the entry of foreign investments and the law that liberalized the entry of foreign banks in the banking system, among others.

In 1998, he established Think Tank Inc., which is currently involved in political, economic and financial environment scanning, as well as policy advocacy. It was also during this period that he served as member of the board of advisers of Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. and a member of the board of governors of the Philippine Stock Exchange.

In September 2000, he was appointed by then President Estrada as president and chief executive of state-owned Land Bank of the Philippines. Under his leadership of nearly five years, the bank’s financial performance showed significant improvement, becoming the country’s third largest bank in terms of assets, deposits and loans. He is also credited with successfully steering the bank back to its original mandate of spurring development and alleviating poverty in the countryside.

And in July 2005, Teves assumed his “most stressful” position, as he would call it, when he was named Secretary of Finance by then President Arroyo. Surpassing the average tenure of his predecessors at the Finance department, having served in the Cabinet for nearly five years, Teves finally stepped down from office on June 30, 2010.

In late 2009, Teves was also appointed as the public sector cochairman of the Special National Public Reconstruction Commission, which was tasked to undertake the evaluation and coordination of local and international donor financing for major reconstruction initiatives aimed to address the widespread damage to infrastructure caused by typhoons Ondoy and Frank that hit the country in the third and fourth quarters of that year. He stepped down as commission cochairman as he ended his term as Cabinet member in June 2010.

Aside from Teves, the other recipients of honorary degrees from Williams College were Arctic and Antarctic explorer Ann Bancroft, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, art vanguard Marina Abramovic, award-winning TV documentary producer and director Ken Burns, and world politics and international security scholar Bruce Russett.