Roberto Mamangon Pagdanganan or Obet comes from humble beginnings in Calumpit, Bulacan. His father, a former baranggay captain and municipal councilor, a carpenter and a farmer. His mother was a market vendor.

Obet graduated from elementary and high school a consistent Valedictorian. He graduated BS Chemical Engineering at the Manuel L. Quezon University as the first Summa Cum Laude of the University's School of Engineering. Obet earned his Master's Degree in Business Administration from the De La Salle University and his Bachelor of laws from MLQU. In December 1995, Obet was conferred a Doctorate Degree in Education, Honoris Causa by the Bulacan State University.

Obet was an active student leader. At Grade 6, he was elected Boy Mayor of his town. He joined the Boy Scouts 10th World Jamboree in 1959. Today he is National President of BSP. He was two-time president of the MLQU Engineering and Architecture Student Council and was the National President of the Philippine Institute of Chemical Engineering Students in 1967-68.

Obet was also a professor and chairman of Chemical Engineering at the MLQU. He also taught at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. He was always believed as a teacher and now a topnotch governor that “ the ultimate challenge and reward for a leader is to be able to help mold the youth to become better leaders and citizens.”

Prior to being OIC-Governor, Obet was an entrepreneur and senior executive at UNILEVER-PRC where he worked for 18 years holding various executive positions and trained in various management courses at the UNILEVER Training Center and Ashridge College of Management in England. An active street parliament even then, Obet Pagdanganan was appointed OIC-Governor of the province of Bulacan in March 1986. He was elected to first term unopposed in January 1988; reelected with a record-breaking margin on 114,700 votes in May 1992 and broke his own record upon reelection for his final third term with a margin of 190,000 votes—the highest in the history of the province of Bulacan. Governor Obet is now also serving his third term as National President of the League of Provinces of the Philippines.

A staunch advocate of Sustainable Countryside Development through Education, Local Autonomy and Cooperative-Entrepreneurial Development, Obet Pagdanganan believes that there should be less government in business and more business in government. He believes that the key to national progress lies in local autonomy and in dynamic GO-NGO-PO synergy. He is the leader of a province known as the Cooperative Province of the Philippines. Bulacan as of March 1996 has 915 cooperatives with total assets of more than 1.7 Billion pesos and 900 million pesos in savings. This, Obet Pagdanganan, attributes to the Bulakeño, who from 1991 has had the highest Average Family Income among provinces.

Under Governor Obet's stewardship, Bulacan has been a consistent recipient of prestigious national awards like Gawad Galing Pook awards in 1994, 1995 and 1996 and the consistent Regional Outstanding Winner in Nutrition (CROWN Award). Just recently, the province again bagged the First National Heritage Awards or the Gawad Pamana ng Lahi for Outstanding Local Governance in the Province Category conferred by President Fidel V. Ramos in Malacañang. This recognition, dubbed as the Mother of all Awards confirms Bulacan's stature as a leading province in cooperatives, cultural development, and social services.

Gov. Obet Pagdanganan is married to Susana Oblefias-Pagdanganan—former professor of Chemical Engineering at MLQU and presently National President of the Rural Improvement Clubs of the Philippines, Governor of the Philippine National Red Cross and Vice-President at Large of the National Council of Women in the Philippines (NCWP). They have two children, namely, Maria Rossana, who is a Department Manager at Unilever-PRC and Roberto Raymond, a college freshman at the University of Asia and the Pacific.