Davao City Congressman Prospero Nograles who dislodged former Speaker Jose de Venecia on Monday, February 4 for the No. 4 highest office in the land was an honor student all throughout his school life from the Ateneo de Davao grade school and high school until he finished law at the Ateneo de Manila and copped the second place in the 1971 bar examinations.
Only 60 years old, the new House Speaker is currently serving his fifth term as representative of the First Congressional District of Davao City. He was a member of the 8th Congress (1989-1992), 10th Congress (1995-1998), 12th and 13th Congress (2001-2007) and is on the last of his three successive terms in the present 14th Congress.
In 1985 he received the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines (TOYM) award for Law and Human Rights from the Philippine Jaycees.
Before entering politics he was law professor at the University of Mindanao and at the Ateneo de Davao University and had a stint as a Chief Legal Counsel of the Development Bank of the Philippines. He was president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Davao City and Davao del Sur Chapter from 1979 to 1981.
In 2005 he was conferred by the University of Mindanao the Doctor of Laws degree Honoris Causa.
Speaker Nograles is married to Rhodora Bendigo Nograles, a UST BS Psychology and Ateneo de Davao MA Guidance and Counselling graduate, with whom he has four children: Kristine Elizabeth, who pursued her Doctor of Medicine at the Philippine College of Medicine Dermatology, Skin and Cancer Foundation; Karlo Alexis, a BS Management Engineering graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University; Jericho Jonas, BS Legal Management at the Ateneo de Manila University; and Margarita Ignacia who is presently at the Miriam College High School.
