Dumaguete diplomat is new vice consul in London

DUMAGUETE CITY — A native of this city has been recently appointed as the Third Secretary and Vice Consul of the Philippine Embassy in London, United Kingdom.

At the age of 29, Stacy Danika Alcantara-Garcia is now among the top Filipino diplomats in the United Kingdom. She will be stationed in London for the next six years.

Alcantara-Garcia will be primarily serving as the Public and Cultural Diplomacy Officer of the Philippine Embassy in London, where she will lead initiatives aimed to create a “positive, realistic” image of the Philippines in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Among her functions as Public and Cultural Diplomacy Officer include forging relationships with UK-based media, developing the Embassy’s social media presence, collaborating with top universities in the UK to open platforms for intelligent discussions on Philippine culture, and engaging with Filipinos living in the UK, among others.

“I’m excited to handle this challenging responsibility. Public diplomacy plays important role in shaping the way other countries and other cultures perceive us,” Alcantara-Garcia said.

This is her first foreign post since joining the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in 2015. In 2013, she topped the Foreign Service Officers’ Examination, considered one of the Philippines’ most difficult tests.

Alcantara-Garcia is also concurrently the Administrative Officer of the Philippine Embassy in London.

Before her post in the UK, she worked at the Office of Public Diplomacy in the DFA’s headquarters in Manila. She took a quick break to pursue graduate studies on International Relations and Diplomacy at the Geneva School of Diplomacy in Switzerland; she finished the course with a perfect 4.0 Grade Point Average (GPA).

Among her career highlights in her Manila stint include drafting the DFA Manual of Style, which serves as a rough guide on how public diplomats write journalistic pieces.

She was also instrumental in developing the strong social media presence of the DFA, which she said just “exploded” and “never slept” since she took the helm.

Alcantara-Garcia is well-remembered in Dumaguete as a “True Red,” having spent all her student years from early childhood to college in Silliman University (SU). She graduated from SU in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, summa cum laude.

As of this writing, she is still the most recent graduate from SU’s College of Mass Communication who received the university’s highest graduation honors. —KBK, GMA News