Atty Deborah Sy LlB, LlM

Atty. Deborah Sy is a global health lawyer who serves as the Head of Global Public Policy and Strategy at the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), a joint initiative of Thammasat University and Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA), that has been designated as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Secretariat’s Knowledge Hub for Article 5.3. She authored SEATCA’s Article 5.3 Toolkit and the Handbook on Policies and Practices on Implementing Article 5.3 as well as conceptualized the Tobacco Industry Interference Index, a country ranking on the capacity to resist tobacco industry influence.

She is a Johns Hopkins University IGTCI Awardee for Excellence in Advocacy (2012) for instituting tobacco industry monitoring activities which won the 2012 Bloomberg Award on Monitoring for HealthJustice while she was executive director. She remains the think tank’s founding trustee and senior advisor, providing guidance on universal health care, health promotion, financing, taxation, regulation, and illicit trade, among others.

She was an adjunct professor at the Harrison Institute of Public Law at Georgetown University where she received her Master of Law in Global Health and Certificate in WTO Studies and pioneered research on modern trade agreements in low and middle-income countries. She earned her degrees in economics and law at the University of the Philippines.