Astrid S. Tuminez was appointed the seventh president of Utah Valley University (UVU) in 2018, and is the institution’s first female president. Tuminez brings to UVU a broad and rich experience in academia, philanthropy, technology, and business. Born in a farming village in the Philippine province of Iloilo, Tuminez moved with her parents and six siblings to the slums of Iloilo City when she was two years old, her parents seeking better educational opportunities for their children.
Eventually this led Tuminez to the United States, where she earned a BA from Brigham Young University, an AM from Harvard University (where she was a resident tutor for undergraduates at Mather House), and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Tuminez’s career includes positions as senior consultant to the United States Institute of Peace, with responsibility for the peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front; director of research (alternative investments) at AIG Global Investment; and program officer at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where her grantmaking focused on democratization, conflict prevention, and nuclear nonproliferation. In the 1990s, Tuminez ran the Moscow office of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, Harvard Kennedy School, working with key reformers including Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze. Tuminez sat on the boards of Singapore American School and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI). She was also chair of the board of ASKI Global, an NGO that promotes financial literacy and entrepreneurship among migrant workers, especially domestic helpers, in Singapore. Formerly an international adviser to the Global Economic Symposium, Tuminez was also previously an adviser to the Institute on Disability and Public Policy for the ASEAN region and the Asian Women’s Leadership University Project.
Prior to joining UVU, Tuminez worked for Microsoft in Singapore as regional director for corporate, external, and legal affairs (Southeast Asia). Her Microsoft team supported 15 markets and drove government affairs, policy and regulatory engagements, academic and nonprofit relations, and other activities to enhance understanding and use of technology for the public good. Tuminez is also the former vice dean of research and assistant dean of executive education at Asia’s premier school of public policy, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (National University of Singapore), where she trained over 2,000 government officials and private-sector professionals in leadership and organizational change.
In 2013, Tuminez received a “100 Most Influential Filipina Women in the World Award” from the Filipina Women's Network. She has been a U.S. Institute of Peace Scholar, a Freeman Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, a Harvard Kennedy School Fellow, a distinguished alumna of Brigham Young University, and a fellowship recipient of both the Social Science Research Council and the MacArthur Foundation. Tuminez is a permanent member and former adjunct fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. She is the author of Rising to the Top? A Report on Women’s Leadership in Asia and Russian Nationalism Since 1856: Ideology and the Making of Foreign Policy (2000), as well as numerous articles, essays, and op-eds on a range of subjects. She was awarded the 2016 Gold Standard Award for Professional Excellence by PublicAffairsAsia for her work in corporate affairs and public policy.
Tuminez enjoys running, dancing, and martial arts. She and her husband, Jeffrey S. Tolk, have three children.
