Filipinos have been in the United States since the 16th century, yet many of their stories remain untold. For the past months, Positively Filipino has been running a series on notable Filipino Americans who have made their marks in this country. There are hundreds, or maybe even thousands more, that need to be added to this story, and we need your help. If you know of a Filipino American who deserves to be included in this line-up, please send us their names and any supporting documents you may have to pfpublisher@yahoo.com. For now, we are including only those who are currently active and visible in the media and the community, regardless of their religious, sexual or political orientation. Thank you.

Kataluna Enriquez, Transgender Beauty Queen

Enriquez will become the first transgender woman ever to compete for Miss USA, reports Rappler, after recently winning Miss Nevada. Enriquez’s victory spread quickly through the transgender community. Miss Trans Global 2020 Mela Habijan twitted: “Our trans Pinay sister Kataluna Enriquez made history today! She won Miss Nevada 2021. She will be the first trans woman to compete at the Miss USA Pageant.” Enriquez grew up in San Leandro, California. She studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Las Vegas. She won the Transnation Queen USA title in 2016. However, she has not always felt welcomed in the pageant world. “I was asked to provide documents that were invasive in my opinion physically asking me to get a letter from my doctor,” Enriquez said to Fox 5 back in March. The doctor had to certify that she was female. During one pageant, she was the only one not to get a roommate. “It brought me back to a time where I felt like I was not welcome,” Enriquez said.

Neil G. Ruiz, Associate Director, Pew Research Center

Ruiz’s parents immigrated to the U.S. before he was born. Together with other graduate students at MIT, Ruiz founded in 2004 the Philippine Emerging Startups Open (PESO), a technology and innovation-oriented business plan competition modeled after the annual MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. He wanted to find a way to combat the “brain drain” that was happening in the Philippines. The competition received more than 70 business plans on biotech, information technology, process and manufacturing, agriculture and more. The winner received $1,500 as well as continued help and mentorship from PESO in developing and marketing the product. PESO received the Public Service Center’s (PSC) award for best new service project. As an associate director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center, Ruiz studies the international movement of people across borders, high-skilled immigration to the U.S. and around the world, demographic analysis of Asian Americans, and comparative legal immigration systems. Prior to joining the Center, Ruiz was the executive director of the Center for Law, Economics & Finance at George Washington University, and he has also worked as a migration and economic development expert at the Brookings Institution, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. He is a political economist with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree from Oxford University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Ruiz regularly speaks about U.S. immigration and international migration research with major print and broadcast media.

M. Evelina Galang, Author and Activist

Galang briefly worked at an NBC affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin as a producer and on-air/entertainment reporter. She pursued an MFA in creative writing at Colorado State University. After teaching creative writing at Old Dominion University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Iowa State University, Galang received a 2002 Fulbright Research Fellowship, allowing her to spend eight months in the Philippines researching the stories of surviving comfort women. She is a leading advocate of Pinayism, a form of feminism rooted in the Filipina American experience. Galang is the author of the story collection Her Wild American Self, novels One Tribe and Angel De La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery, the nonfiction work Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War , and the editor of Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. Her writing explores the experiences of Filipino immigrants and first-generation Filipino Americans. Among her numerous awards are the 2004 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Prize for the Novel, the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award for ONE TRIBE, the 2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights, and a 2002 Senior Research Fellowship from Fulbright. In the spring of 2020, Galang was named Cornell University’s Zalaznick Distinguished Visiting Writer. She directed the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami from 2009-2019. She now teaches for the University of Miami Creative Writing Program and is core faculty and President of the Board of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation. Galang’s parents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s. They met at the campus of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her father, Miguel Galang, became a doctor and her mother, Gloria Lopez-Tan, earned a graduate degree in English literature.

Janelle So, Journalist and Host

Born and raised in the Philippines, So is of Chinese, Filipino, and Spanish descent. She attended St. Theresa’s College for elementary and high school and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication, cum laude, from Miriam College. She moved to the U.S. in 2003 with her family, leaving behind a sportscaster career. She was the host and producer of “Kababayan Today,” a daily show magazine/talk show for and about Filipinos that aired in KSCI (LA-18) television. The show ran for nine years; she left the show in 2014. In 2013, So won the New America Media Award for Outstanding Community Reporting for Television in recognition of her work, “Human Trafficking Special: A 4-Part Series.” She has received other awards from community organizations.

Diane Phelan, Broadway Actor and Activist

Raised in Taipei and New Haven, Phelan struggled to connect to her Filipino American identity. “Even though I’m Filipina American, I was born and raised Third Culture in Taipei and went to a school for prodigious musicians completely in Mandarin. I was fluent and thought I was actually Chinese until about 12 years old, when I discovered I wasn’t actually Chinese. It was confusing and took me a few years to work out as a kid, but now it’s a part of who I am and I’m proud of it,” she said in an interview in thecre8asianproject.com. She is a singer, actress, and director based in New York City. She has performed on Broadway in “School of Rock,” internationally in “West Side Story,” “Here Lies Love,” “Where Elephants Weep” in Cambodia, and on a national tour of “The King and I.” Diane is also heavily involved with #RacismIsAVirus and the Broadway Diversity Project. When asked who she admired, she replied, “I admire every single person of color who takes a risk to be unapologetic and speak their truth. I am always inspired by authenticity.”

Peter Bacho, Novelist

Peter Bacho (Source: Colorado State University)

Bacho is best known for his book, Cebu, which won the American Book Award. It is a disturbing story about the struggles of a young Filipino American priest, the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Bacho also hoped to bridge the gap and “examine the cultural differences between Filipino and Filipino American cultures” in Cebu. He also won the Washington Governor’s Writers Award for Dark Blue Suit, a collection of stories. Other books include: Boxing in Black and White, Nelson’s Run, Entrys and Leaving Yesler. Many of his books deal with the Filipino experience in the United States. His latest book, Uncle Rico’s Encore, to be published in January 2022, deals with how Filipino Americans lived a hardscrabble existence from the 1950s through the 1970s. Bacho’s father was a field worker who traveled from harvest to harvest, and Bacho grew up in Seattle, Washington where he received his B.A. from Seattle University, his J.D. from the University of Washington. He also teaches at The Evergreen State College in Tacoma, Washington.

Rhacel Parrenas, Ph.D., Professor

Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. She is an ethnographer whose current research empirically focuses on contemporary experiences of servitude and engages theories of freedom and morals to analyze the constitution of migrant workers as "unfree" laborers. Her areas of research include labor, gender, international migration, the family and economic sociology. An author of numerous articles and books, her seminal works include the monographs Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work, Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo, and Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. She is the co-editor of the Stanford University Press Book Series on Globalization in Everyday Life. Her writings have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Spanish. In 2019, her research contributions to Sociology were recognized with the Jessie Bernard Award by the American Sociological Association, which is given "in recognition of scholarly work that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society." For her commitment to transformative scholarship and work with various organizations including Human Rights Watch and Pilipino Worker's Center of Los Angeles, she received the 2018 Feminist Activist Award from the ASA Sex and Gender Section. Her mentorship of junior scholars and extensive work towards helping diversify higher education were recognized in 2020 with a Mentoring Award from Sociologists for Women in Society.

Ryan Letada, CEO and Founder, NextDayBetter

Born in Kuwait to refugee parents, Letada was raised in the Philippines before his family immigrated to the Bronx. While living and going to school in the Bronx, Ryan was awarded the Posse Foundation Scholarship, a recognition that paved the way for a Fulbright. He received the 2014 Ainslie Alumni Achievement Award from his alma mater, Wheaton College, where he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in economics, for his contributions to the global community through social innovation. In his acceptance speech, he said, “I am here because of my family, especially my parents. Many of us in this room can relate to this immigrant story, but it is my parent’s courage to migrate away from their families, and build a life in the United States from scratch that allowed me to have the life I have today…It is their sacrifice and commitment to our family here and abroad that inspires my own work.” During his Fulbright year, he launched the One Laptop Per Child program in the Philippines (the country’s first one-to-one digital learning program in rural communities). He is now the CEO and founder of NextDayBetter, a media company that exists to humanize the migrant experience. Their vision is to create the world’s largest library of migrant stories, seeking to reimagine migrants, immigrants, and refugees as a benefit to humanity. NextDayBetter’s speaker series events and communities have expanded to six cities – New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, San Francisco and Manila. He also serves as a Google Next Gen Policy Fellow focused on advocating for inclusive tech policies.

Nelson San Juan, Deputy Commissioner, Labor and Workforce Development, Alaska

Nelson San Juan (Source: Department of Labor, Alaska)

San Juan has worked for the State of Alaska for 26 years, 23 of them with the department prior to his role as deputy. He has dedicated his career to Alaska workers, employers, and the business community. Prior to serving as deputy commissioner, San Juan was the principal liaison between the department and Alaska’s seafood industry. He managed and conducted numerous special employment and orientation events to recruit for and fill thousands of job openings annually. He traveled to and worked extensively with rural communities from Dutch Harbor and Nunam Iqua to King Salmon, Bethel, Atka, Cordova, Togiak, and Emmonak. He met with a variety of agencies, groups, and organizations to promote Alaska jobs and the department’s workforce development programs. During that period, San Juan developed a network of contacts and resources in Alaska, Washington, California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and other states. He has a B.A. in Economics from Adamson University in Manila (Philippines). He volunteers for more than 10 local nonprofit and community groups, and he enjoys traveling and hiking. He lives in Anchorage with his wife, Bella.

Meta Sarmiento, Spoken Word Artist

Meta Sarmiento (Source: University of Guam)

Sarmiento is a Filipino poet and rapper from Guam living in Denver, Colorado. He is a National Poetry Slam semifinalist with Slam Nuba, a TEDx speaker, and winner of Spoken Word for the World 2015 where he was flown to Paris, France to perform poetry during the United Nations’ Climate Negotiations. Sarmiento tells his story of overcoming an urban culture of toxic masculinity, including gang violence at a young age, and finding a positive direction in slam poetry. His latest collection of poems is Tie Your Shoes Kid, and his two hip-hop albums are Nobody Knew and APT 207. His work has been featured by TEDxMileHigh, Voyage Denver, Denver Westword, NBC News, Asian Avenue Magazine, Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Words, Guam Daily Post, Button Poetry, Rap Direct, and Word is Bond. For Sarmiento, the theme of context is linked to concepts of origins and roots. He has facilitated workshops for more than 10,000 students from middle school to university level. He is a Teaching Artist for 2020 Aspen Words Poetry in Schools Project; a recipient of 2020 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award from Denver Asian American Pacific Islander Commission; and was a finalist for 2019 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest, a winner of 2019 Yes to Propose Hip-Hop Challenge, and a Top 12 finisher at World Underground MC Tournament 2018.

Justin Foronda, Nurse, Chef, and Restaurateur

While working as a nurse, Foronda felt he needed a creative outlet, so he opened HiFi Kitchen in historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles (HiFi stands for Historic Filipinotown), that serves Filipino dishes he grew up with. After a brief stint at a culinary school he started his own brunch pop-up, Beneddictz, serving different kinds of Eggs Benedict, while working at the hospital at the same time. A feature in LA Weekly brought 70-100 people to the waiting list. But COVID-19 saw Foronda spending more time in the hospital, tending to patients and, later on, providing food to the hospital staff as well. His favorite dish on the menu? Chicken adobo that his father taught him how to cook. Foronda, however, substitutes some ingredients to make it more savory.

Source: Google and Wikipedia

The Magazine

Fil-Ams Among The Remarkable And Famous, Part 23