Alumni Profiles
Gigo Alampay
MPIA '96
Gigo Alampay is a professorial lecturer at the Uniersity of the Philippines, and works as an executive director at CANVAS, a nonprofit organization that helps to promote Philippine art and culture. Its flagship activity is the Romeo Forbes Children's Storywriting Competition and Art Exhibition, a unique annual contest that results in the publication of full color children's books based on original stories and featuring contemporary paintings by some of the country's best emerging artists. There is also a program in place that explores the use of art, music, and literature to build critical awareness of national Filipino identity and promote selected sociopolitical causes, particularly environmentalism, nationalism and diversity, and free expression.
Gigo is recognized as one of the country's top legal and policy experts in the information and communications technology sector. For the past three years, he has managed the Last Mile Initiative-Philippines (LMIP), a USAID-funded program to help bridge the digital divide in the Philippines. Gigo conceptualized and designed LMIP, which was started in 2005, to help set up internet access and provide related training for community e-centers (CeCs) in rural and unserved communities throughout the Philippines.
