Janet Braganza Abuel (born March 13, 1971) is a Filipino lawyer, accountant and public servant who, from March to August 2019, served as acting secretary of the Department of Budget and Management in the Duterte administration following the appointment of former-Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Early life and education Abuel was born on March 13, 1971, in Dagupan, Pangasinan, the fourth of seven children of Miguel and Fausta Abuel. She went to Dominican School in Dagupan for her elementary and secondary schooling. From 1987 to 1991, she attended Saint Louis University in Baguio where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Commerce degree major in accounting. She passed the certified public accountant examinations in 1991. For her post graduate studies, she attended Baguio Colleges Foundation (currently known as the University of the Cordilleras) where she earned a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1998. A single working mother, she attended night school from 5 to 8 p.m. after office work. In the 1998 bar examinations, she placed first with a 91.80% rating, becoming the first bar topnotcher of the university. When interviewed in 2000 about her experiences after topping the bar, she said: From 2004 to 2005, she went to Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy under a scholarship and earned a Master's degree in public policy. She was also awarded a certificate of completion in 2014 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University where she attended the Executive Education Program on Driving Government Performance. She also holds a Master of Laws degree from University of Sydney in Australia. Career Abuel first started her career as a new accounts clerk at the Makati branch of BPI Family Bank from 1993 to 1994. In 1995, she was an accounting clerk of the Baguio Sub-Regional Office of the Home Development Mutual Fund. In 1996, she was an accountant of the Sto. Niño Jesus Medical Center in Baguio. Abuel was also a part-time instructor at the University of the Cordilleras College of Law from 1999 to 2010 and authored the handbook Bar Review Methods and Techniques, 2003 Edition. Department of Budget & Management Abuel started working at the DBM in 1996 as a budget analyst of the department's Cordillera Administrative Region office in Baguio. Up until 1999, she worked in the regional office becoming a budget specialist in 1998 and a senior