Service. Leadership. Excellence. Impactful change. Sigma Delta Phi names these as its purpose and vision. This year, three sisters, in three very different fields, gave them a face. Connie Angeles '76 and Dean Atty. Marisol Anenias '94 were honored at the 2026 UP Alumni Association awards. Dr. Isabel Melgar '74 was named Outstanding Professional of the Year in Psychology by the Professional Regulation Commission. Different bodies, different fields, different rooms, but laid side by side, their citations tell a similar kind of story: none of them were recognized for one achievement. Each was recognized for what she built, patiently, over twenty, thirty, almost forty years.

Connie Angeles '76 started in public office, first as Councilor of Quezon City, later as its Vice Mayor. That was decades ago. Since then, she has spent over twenty-five years leading the SM Foundation's health and medical programs, coordinating with hospitals, local governments, civic groups, and private partners to bring medical missions and public health support to communities across the country. The people her work reaches, women, children, senior citizens, families with limited access to care, are rarely the ones who make headlines. It is a career built on being where the need was, not where the recognition was.

Dean Atty. Marisol Anenias '94 has spent her career moving between the classroom and the institutions that shape it, as professor, dean, and eventually President and Chairperson of the Philippine Association of Law Schools. Under her leadership, curriculum innovation, clinical legal education, and access to justice stopped being talking points and became the actual work of legal education reform. The PLM College of Law's recognition as a Center of Excellence did not happen by accident, and neither did her service to the Supreme Court, the Philippine Judicial Academy, and the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development along the way. The UPAA's Distinguished Alumni Award for Legal Education recognizes a career spent making sure the next generation of lawyers is trained better than the last.

Dr. Isabel Melgar '74 has practiced clinical psychology for 37 years, and her record reads less like a single career and more like several: HIV/AIDS prevention and care, cancer support, pain management, mental health advocacy, public health. She helped push the Psychology Law of 2010 into existence as Chair of the PAP Clinical Psychology Committee, and broke ground twice over, as the first non-medical professional to lead the AIDS Society of the Philippines and the first admitted to the Board of the Pain Society of the Philippines. Perhaps most telling is the Patients' Forum, a support group she pioneered for cancer patients and their families, now running as bereavement camps in Davao, Cebu, and Iloilo. Programs like that are not built to make a name. They are built to keep going after the name is forgotten.

Three sisters, three fields, two ceremonies. What connects them is not the recognition itself, but what stood behind it: years of sustained work, in public office and foundations, in classrooms and courtrooms, in hospitals and support groups, that outlasted any single achievement. Sigma Delta Phi's vision speaks of a legacy of leadership, excellence, and impactful change. This year, three sisters showed that such a legacy does not come from one kind of career, but from staying with the work long enough to leave something behind.


(L-R) Connie Angeles '76, Dean Atty. Marisol Anenias '94, Dr. Isabel Melgar '74