With profound sorrow, we announce the passing of Dr. Gil Rosero Ramos. He passed away in Las Vegas, NV in mid-January 2022 at the age of 70 years old. Gil was born in September 1951 in the province of Masbate in the Philippines. He is the first son of Nenita Rosero and Feliciano Ramos, and leaves behind his siblings Angelita, Eva, Roy, and Sol.
As a young man, Gil began his journey as a lifelong scholar as the editor-in-chief of The Ranch at the Masbate National Comprehensive High School. He received a full scholarship to The University of the Philippines Diliman, completing his undergraduate studies in 1976 with a major in Economics. Gil was then selected as a Research Fellow at the East West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In 1993, he authored his chief work as an economist, The Global Value of the U.S. Dollar 1950-1990.
Gil worked both in the Philippines and the United States. In the Philippines, he was a Staff Economist at the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), and later served as the Economist/Budget Analyst for the Slum Improvement and Resettlement Program in Manila, Philippines. He was also a lecturer at the Development Academy of the Philippines, and as consultant with the Senate, Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), Office of Special Concerns Malacañang, and the Department of Interior and Local Government. In the private sector of the Philippines, Ramos has served as a consultant to Banco Filipino and the Jacinto Group of Companies.
In the wake of the tech boom in the early 1990s, Gil pivoted to computer programming and worked as a consultant in the med-tech industry throughout the East Coast including at IBM and the SAS Institute. Gil was a consultant at the State of Florida’s Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Social Security Administration in Washington DC and a number of private enterprises including Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Blue Shield of California, Sanofi-Aventis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Yale New Haven Health Systems, Amgen Inc, Reader’s Digest, and Marriott Hotel Corporate Headquarters. Gil has also served as an economist with the National Council for Compensation Insurance. His experience in the US in both the public and private sectors was focused on finance like the stock and commodity markets, banking, the insurance industry, and the financial market analysis for the Pharmaceutical industry.
Known for his intense political leanings, he began his time as a young anti-Marcos and anti-Martial Law activist as the Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Socialist Movement under the mentorship of Raul Manglapus. Heavily involved with LABAN ng BAYAN (later known as PDP-LABAN), he went on to become the Chairperson of the Masbate Chapter of PDP-LABAN in 1986-1988. He identified strongly as an organizer for the Filipino people, and was also a co-founder of the Masbateno Association of America. In his later years, he founded Survey Ng Bayan, a public opinion research group composed of Filipino social researchers based in the Philippines and in the United States, and served as its Chief Economist until his death.
Gil raised his three daughters in Jersey City, NJ for over two decades. Then, he spent the remainder of his lifetime creating homes and friendships in a number of places across the world. Gil loved hours-long games of chess with good friends, loudly singing along to Frank Sinatra songs, and cooking delicious skirt steaks. He is survived by his three daughters from his first marriage: Hanalei, Kylene, and Lianne and his best friend, Cleopatra.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Dr. Gil Rosero Ramos Memorial Scholarship Fund his daughters have created in his memory, which will benefit other brilliant scholars from Masbate and support them with a full 4-year scholarship while at the University of the Philippines Diliman.