Thess Agustin has over 30 years of experience in the field of productivity and quality improvement, development of productivity specialists and productivity practitioners,  business excellence, the Philippine Quality Award (PQA), knowledge management, SME cluster and network development programs, project management, team development, course designing, training management and evaluation, and technical writing. She leads and manages strategic initiatives that promote productivity, quality management, and organizational excellence across both the public and private sectors. She conceptualizes, designs, implements, and evaluates bankable training programs on productivity and quality improvement and organizational excellence for public courses and for customized application in client organizations, with extensive experience in implementing productivity and quality improvement programs for the public sector and SMEs. She is a co-author alongside Dr. Robin S. Mann and Dr. Musli Muhammad of The Business Excellence Package for SMEs, an APO publication that serves as a practical guide for achieving excellence in business performance and competitiveness in APO members. She played key roles in the implementation of major national initiatives such as the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) for the Public Sector, Government Best Practice Recognition (GBPR), Best Practice Benchmarking for the Public Sector, Business Excellence (BE) Self-Assessment for the Public Sector, and in capability-building programs for beneficiary government agencies under the Government Quality Management Program (GQMP). She has served as a member of the Technical Working Group of the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) for the Public Sector that reviews and revises the Philippine Government Criteria for the Public Sector of the PQA, a member of the Regional Competitiveness Committee Sub-Committee on Performance Excellence (RCC-SPE), PQA Regionalization since 2022, and a Member-Judge for past Productivity Olympics and a Chair-Judge for the Microenterprise Service Category of the National Screening Committee of the National Wage and Productivity Commission (NWPC)-Department of Labor and Employment’s Productivity Olympics in July 2025. She redesigned and reintroduced the Knowledge Management Program, which is highly valued by the public sector. For over two decades, she has served as the Project Manager for the APO Development of Productivity Specialists and Development of Productivity Practitioners Courses. She redesigned the APO-DPS Basic Course from its 1995 original version, wrote the guidelines for the APO Project Report for the Enhancement of Productivity (PREP) which participants used as a guide for the translation and documentation of learning from the DPS and DPP Basic Courses and later used as an evaluation reference/basis for qualification as productivity specialists. She serves as a Member of the APO Technical Working Group that formulated the Certification Scheme for Productivity Specialists, is deputed as an APO Technical Expert to various programs in its members, and is certified by the APO as an Honorary Productivity Practitioner.  

Augustin is currently a member of the Academy’s Learning and Development (LEAD) Committee and serves as a faculty member of the Academy’s Public Management-Development Program (PMDP)-Middle Managers Course.