As Senior Assistant Governor for Financial Markets, Dr. Villa oversees and provides strategic direction on the central bank’s open market operations, foreign exchange policy implementation, management of the country’s international reserves, and management of risks related to these operations consistent with the BSP’s primary mandates of price stability and financial stability.

In her current role, she has been tasked to lead the BSP’s new strategic objective of capital market development, a goal being explicitly pursued by current BSP Governor Eli M. Remolona, Jr., who foresees the greater market liquidity and depth in the domestic capital market as building blocks to further improving the transmission of BSP’s monetary policy and essential for ensuring financial stability.

Dr. Villa, who has over 40 years of central banking experience, started her central bank career in financial markets as a portfolio manager of fixed income securities and moved through the various trading and reserve management desks of the BSP before being named Chief Dealer in 2004.

In 2005, she was named Chief of Staff to then-BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. until 2017, a position she re-assumed for then-BSP Governor Felipe M. Medalla from 2022 to 2023.

Before being named to her current position, Dr. Villa lent her leadership experience to other departments within the central bank, namely as head of the Payments and Currency Development Sub-Sector and the International Monetary Affairs and Surveillance Sub-Sector. In 2017, she was seconded to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Board as Alternate Executive Director representing the South East Asia Voting Group.

She holds a PhD in Economics from The George Washington University in Washington DC. She earned her MBA (with distinction) and a BS Statistics degree (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines.