At 80, Briones leads the largest bureaucracy with hundreds of thousands of personnel and millions of students.
• ‘They say I am already old but I believe I have the youngest ideas. There is no correlation between the state of my knees and the state of my brain,’ she said.
• Believing that education must continue even amid a pandemic, she motivated key officials of DepEd to come up with the Basic Education – Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP).
• Briones served as Vice-President for Administration and Finance of the University of the Philippines System. Before she was appointed in 2016, she was chair of the Silliman University Board of Trustees, and Regent and Chair-Designate of the Universidad de Manila. She also served as Secretary to the Commission on Audit and served as treasurer of the Philippines.