Leopoldo N. Valdes, Jr., a grandson of Juan D. Nepomuceno, founder of Holy Angel University, is succeeding Dr. Luis Maria R. Calingo as HAU President in an interim capacity.
His appointment was announced by the University’s Board of Trustees a day after the necrological service marking the end of the school’s mourning period for the late President.
In a memorandum to the HAU community, the Board chairperson, Sister Josefina G. Nepomuceno, OSB said that the Board was “grateful that Mr. Valdes has accepted our invitation to serve the University in this capacity (and) we are confident that with his multidimensional leadership, we will successfully work our way through these unprecedented and challenging times and bring an already great institution to even greater heights.”
Valdes, a chemical engineering graduate of the De La Salle University, holds an MBA in business strategy from Simon Fraser University in Canada and a Masters in Management in human resource management from the City University of Seattle, and is currently pursuing his doctorate at the SAIDI Graduate School of Organization Development.
He worked as senior IT officer at the United Nations in Austria and at an international atomic energy agency in Vienna. He also taught at Brighton College Canada, Ashton College, University of Phoenix, and City University of Seattle.
In his home base in Vancouver, he was executive director for two nonprofit organizations serving local businesses and immigrants from the Philippines.
Valdes worked as a junior manager and systems analyst for Proctor and Gamble Philippines and a web accessibility resource person and adviser in various government agencies.
He has served HAU in various capacities, such as chief internationalization officer and officer in charge of the University’s two biggest and most challenging tasks during the pandemic—the transition from face-to-face instruction to online instruction through the Canvas learning management system (LMS), and the campus preparedness advisory task force (COP-ATF) which is the campus equivalent of the government’s inter-agency task force (IATF) for COVID-19.
He is the third among nine children of former HAU board member Leopoldo Valdes Sr. and Don Juan’s daughter and former Angeles Electric Corporation (AEC) treasurer Aurora Nepomuceno.
