Katrina Quirolgico is the embodiment of passion, resistance, hope, dreams, joy, and music. Katrina had a love for the world, exploring, academia, writing, and ultimately wonder. On February 11, 2020, Katrina passed away battling a recently diagnosed cancer. Katrina’s name and legacy is an inspiration to many. She was the angelic voice behind Georgetown University’s commencement ceremony—a voice that guided the students of her Alma Mater on the journeys that they will embark on. Katrina has touched many lives.

In the words of Professor Amira Sonbol, “A teacher’s dream is to be blessed with a student with passion and love for knowledge, someone who reads for pleasure and who challenges the mind and intellect. That is how I have always thought of Katrina, as a teacher’s dream, as the best we hope to graduate from Georgetown. All who taught her will talk about her in the highest terms — diligent, smart and writes like a dream. Katrina was a human being with great dreams, who sang like an angel and made all around her laugh as she tried to make everyone happy even when she suffered pains. RIP Katrina, life is but an instant and we will all be together again.” Dr. Khalid Al-Jufairi (SFS 2009), remembers Katrina as “a bundle of joy…so full of life, ambition and determination. She was a candid fighter for what she believed in. Her work and writings will forever live with us, and my memory of her will never cease to exist.”

Katrina was an economist and political analyst whose research lies in comparative politics, political theory, social thought, and political economy; her focus was centered on statecraft, both domestic and international, in times of political and economic transition. She holds a dual master’s in government and international history (High Distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she defended her dissertation on the historicity of nationalization policy in GCC states; and a bachelor’s in foreign service (magna cum laude) from Georgetown University, where she presented her honors thesis on Tocqueville and temporality in American politics and foreign policy.

She has held senior positions in the private health sector in the Philippines, advising on strategy, policy, and government affairs; has worked in admissions, international recruitment (Middle East and North Africa region), and international education at Northwestern University and Georgetown University; and has held research positions at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University, and at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. She has also lectured and held teaching positions at Georgetown University for classes such as Political and Social Thought, Ethics and Markets, the Philosophy of Education, and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. She has lived in the Caribbean, Western Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and South-East Asia and speaks Arabic, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Tagalog.

Katrina offers words, works, and a life to live by. In her works for The Manila Times, Katrina often engaged with topics pertaining to the social contracts citizens live by. In various articles, her focus centered on the silenced, the marginalized, the impoverished, and the disenfranchised, focusing her work on giving their lives and voices a platform to be heard from. On her works pertaining to the Arab World, Katrina engaged topics of nationalism, gender, citizenry, and the status of many on the margins.

We use Katrina’s name in the present because her words, her works, and her imprint lives on through the various students walking in her footsteps, the countless people she shined her light on, and the hearts that learned to beat at the sound of her music.

We miss you.

For More on Katrina Quirolgico’s works, visit her website on: https://katrinaquirolgico.wixsite.com/main