At the age of 52, PLACIDO L. MAPA, JR. (HS '51) is the youngest person to hold the position of president of the Philippine National Bank since its establishment seven decades ago. The son of Placido Mapa, Sr., who was Secretary of Agriculture during the term of President Quirino, he was born on June 24, 1932 in Bacolod City, and studied at La Salle in Manila from his early student years. Afterwards, he entered the Ateneo de Manila where he obtained his BA degree in 1955 as a magna cum laude honor student, and the St. Louis University in Missouri where he got his master's degree in economics. For the next five years, or from 1957 to 1962, he studied at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachussetts, where he took his Ph.D. degree. The years he had spent preparing himself academically paid off soon after his return to Manila, where he worked at first for the National City Bank of New York. The government was then looking for bright young men who were well versed in economics, and Mapa was tapped by President Macapagal in 1964 as Deputy Director General for the Program Implementation Agency. Despite the change in the presidency in 1965, he remained in that post until President Marcos created his “think tank”, known as the Presidential Economic Staff, with Mapa as Director General. Prior to moving to Malacañang, he had been Undersecretary of the Department of Finance. He left the government in 1974 to become the president and general manager of the Philippine Commercial & Industrial Bank, then president of the Philippine Foreign Loan & Guarantee Corporation and simultaneously chairman of the board of the Development Bank of the Philippines. For about a year, he served with the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. before being recalled to head the NEDA (National Economic & Development Authority). And when P.N. Domingo retired as PNB president, Mapa succeeded him iti March of 1983. “Hard work is my key to success,” he revealed. “I was fortunate to have had such a good and solid education. I was lucky in having had a father who, as a cabinet member, had helped various people and when I asked them for help they were glad to repay the favors that my father had given them”. Slight of stature — he is about five feet three inches – he has prematurely graying hair. He is married to the former Corazon Tinio of Nueva Ecija by whom he has nine children. The two youngest are boys and the rest, girls.