President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has appointed a former diplomat as head of the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM).
Dr. Edward Fereira took his oath as CITEM executive director before Trade and Industry Secretary Alfredo Pascual at the DTI main office in Makati City.
Fereira replaced outgoing officer-in-charge Lourdes Mediran.
Fereira brings to CITEM “three decades of experience in the fields of science, business management, marketing, diplomacy, and now government service.”
CITEM is the export trade promotion arm of the DTI, mandated to promote the Philippines as a reliable source of quality export products and services in the global market.
In 2018, Fereira was appointed as Ambassador of the Philippines to the Republic of Kazakhstan. He also served as the First Honorary Consul of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the Philippines from 2004 to 2011.
Fereira was also a former president of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), the country’s biggest business and management organization composed of top business luminaries. His stint in MAP became his springboard to the diplomatic community as he led and chaired private and government trade missions to different countries.
Fereira’s government career included leadership roles at the National Development Corporation (NDC), Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC), First Cavite Industrial Estate (FCIE), Manila Gas, and Land Bank Realty Development Corporation (LBRDC) among others.
Fereira was conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Technology Management by the Technological University of the Philippines.
He also holds an MBA degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Science (MS) in Marketing Management Development from Syracuse University in New York. He graduated from the University of the Philippines with a bachelor’s degree in microbiology.
After completing his post-graduate studies in lunar microbiology, Fereira worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), under the Apollo 11 “First Man Moon Landing” project, as the first Filipino lunar microbiologist who examined the moon rocks brought back by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins.