Page 13 - 2021 SPUQC GRADRITES

COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER

DR. VALERIE VISITACION MAYUGA
A Paulinian for Service

Dr. Valerie Mayuga is a BS Psychology graduate of St. Paul University
Quezon City, Cum Laude, in 2003. She was also a thesis awardee and an
awardee in the Psychology Department having garnered the highest GPA in
her class. After graduation, she went to medical school and graduated at St
Luke’s College of Medicine in 2009.

Dr. Mayuga is a family medicine specialist with more than 13 years of experience
working in hospitals in the United States, particularly in Chicago, Illinois.She is an
active member of Young Professionals Streeterville Facebook group who
are actively organizing socio-civic activities like donation drives for people
experiencing homelessness and many other humanitarian and charity
works for the underserved. She has organized a card drive, asking people
online to send real greeting cards to be given to hospitalized patients
during the holidays.

She was featured in Block Club Chicago, an independent journalist-run
newsroom covering the covid-19 pandemic in the area, when she em-
barked on a project that is aimed at extending empathy to patients during
the COVID-19 pandemic by collecting donated iPads and similar devices
where Covid-19 patients who are suffering and dying alone can connect
with their loved ones and where their family members and relatives can
give messages of hope or even say their final goodbye.

Dr. Mayuga believes that “there’s a lot of hope in the world and there
are a lot of good people who are willing to help”, thus, she expanded her
mission this year by collecting cards and toys for those who are needing ex-
tra cheer. She appealed to people who are willing “to share a card, stamp,
and kind words to a stranger.” She is happy “to see the response of people
wanting to give and wanting to be a part of something that’s good which
makes one still believe in humanity”.

“And so each day as I travel on, I will remember that I’m a Paulinian
committed to Jesus Christ, my Lord, to love and serve one another, till in
Him, we unite.”

Indeed, Dr. Mayuga has taken the meaning of the “Paulinian Mission Song”
to a higher level! She has lived each word of the song by heart!

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