Sed Lex Tax and Legal Advisory

Althea is the Managing Partner of Sed Lex Professional Partnership. Althea is a tax (direct and indirect) and corporate lawyer with deep policy drafting, project management and business analysis experience. She specializes in regulatory governance with particular emphasis on the following fields — direct and indirect taxation, trade facilitation, environment, maritime, energy, land transportation, agriculture, food and drugs — where she has acted on behalf of both private and public interest groups.

She is presently a tax lecturer at the San Beda College of Law – Alabang, a Subject Matter Expert on Fiscal Revenue Legal Framework for the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office (PLLO) of the Office of the President and a CMTA Policy Consultant for the Office of the Commissioner of Bureau of Customs. 

Althea also acted as the General Counsel of the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity and is also a trained arbitrator of the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center, Inc. (PDRCI). 

Her expertise comes from having dealt with a wide range of clients in private and public sector. She is known for her direct, systematic and results-oriented approach. She understands her client’s vision and helps them accomplish them in an effective, secure, and sustainable way. She is capable of adapting and utilizing her skills and expertise to fulfill the client’s demand with integrity and competence. Some of her accomplishments include the following: Negotiated the asset Sale of a 9 month old start-up to one of the two (2) major telcos in the Philippines; Provided tax planning and legal risk mitigation programs for several Top 1000 companies; Advised Top 1000 Corporation clients on often opaque regulatory rules in order to lower costs of doing business while eliminating risk; Project Head of the 10 Year Case Audit of the Trafficking-In-Persons (TIP) Project by the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT)-Department of Justice (DOJ)(a pioneering study often cited by the Department of Justice in its TIP presentations); Acted as Project Manager of the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act Implementing Rules and Regulations Project Management Office (CMTA IRR PMO) which institutionalized the use of business process and regulatory impact analysis in policy making; Primarily contributed to the framework of analysis of governmental regulation used by the Inter-Agency Business Process Interoperability Project of the Department of Finance.

Prior to graduating from law school, Althea spent several years in San Francisco, California. There she worked as a Business Analyst for a software development company catering to major players in the financial service and legal service industries. 

As a way to give back to her community, Althea serves as the Executive Director of Humanility, a not-for-profit organization providing assisted shelter, education and social entrepreneurship to former street children and their families in Makati City, Metro Manila and former street children in the Municipality of Bogo, Cebu.