Filipinos have been in the United States since the 16th century, yet many of their stories remain untold. For the past year, 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.

R’Bonney Gabriel, Miss Universe

Miss Universe R’Bonney Gabriel (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters)

Houston native Gabriel, a fashion designer, model and sewing instructor was crowned the 71st Miss Universe in New Orleans, Louisiana last January 15. She was the first Filipino American to win Miss USA. When asked how she would work to demonstrate Miss Universe as an empowering and progressive organization, she replied that she would like to be a transformational leader and be a force for good in the fashion industry by cutting down on pollution and using recycled materials in making clothing pieces. “I teach sewing classes to women that have survived from human trafficking and domestic violence. And I say that because it is so important to invest in others, invest in our community, and use your unique talent to make a difference.” Gabriel grew up in Missouri City with her father who is from Manila and her mother who is from Texas, and three older brothers. Her father immigrated to Washington at the age of 25 and later received a degree in psychology from the University of Houston. Gabriel graduated from the University of North Texas with a bachelor’s degree in fashion design with a minor in fibers. Gabriel is the 9th American to win the pageant.

Dr. Roberto Sanchez Mariano, Vatican Economist

Dr. Roberto Mariano, a Filipino American economist from the University of Pennsylvania, was appointed by Pope Francis as a Board Member of Supervisory and Financial Information Authority (ASIF). Mariano is renowned for many econometric models he has helped create and are used today as planning and forecasting tools, which he developed from his research and experience from the 1970s onward in his work for multinational institutions, central banks, government agencies, and private companies throughout Asia and the United States. In a statement released to Vatican News, ASIF President Carmelo Barbagallo said he was "certain that Professor Mariano, an internationally renowned economist, will be able to contribute his experience and professionalism for an outstanding fulfillment of the tasks" assigned to the ASIF Board. Mariano graduated magna cum laude from the Ateneo de Manila University with an A.B. degree in Mathematics, the University of the Philippines with a master’s in Statistics, from the University of Illinois with a master’s in Mathematics, and Stanford University with a Ph.D. in Statistics. He is also the founding dean of the School of Economics at the Singapore Management University.

Tim Bajarin, Technology Columnist and Consultant

Bajarin was one of the first analysts to cover the personal computer industry and is considered one of the leading experts in the field of technology adoption life cycles. He is president of a technology company called Creative Strategies, located in Campbell, California. He is a leading columnist for PC Magazine and Time Magazine. He also contributed in some episodes of the Computer Chronicles. Bajarin is a futurist and is credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years before it reached the market and multimedia. He served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple Inc., Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, and Toshiba. He also serves on the technology advisory boards for IBM, Compaq, and Dell. Half-Filipino and half-German, Bajarin grew up in San Jose and also considers himself a serious cook. His Filipino uncle was the White House chef for President Harry Truman.

Tesa Aragones, Branding and Communications Expert

WPP-owned communications and design agency AKQA announced in September its appointment of Tesa Aragones as its first North America president. With over 25 years of experience, Aragones is head of strategy and helps develop the agency’s business in the region and internationally. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when she joined Discord as chief marketer. Before that she held executive marketing positions at Nike and photo editing and sharing app, Vsco. At AKQA, she says that her experiences have taught her to prioritize consumers above all else, i.e., letting consumers and consumer behavior lead the decision-making process at all times. When Aragones’ niece, Kylie, a tennis player, became a survivor of the shooting at Oxford High School in Detroit, Aragones rallied professional heavyweights that included Billie Jean King, Naomi Osaka, and others to send Kylie a personal video wishing her a speedy recovery, and filmed Kylie’s story, which was aired on the Tennis Channel during the US Open tournament.

Nikko Cagalanan, Chef

Cagalanan competed on the Food Network Channels’ Chopped on November 22 and won the $10,000 prize. He was born in the Philippines and settled in South Carolina with his wife in 2011. He was a nurse but found himself missing the flavors of home, so he began watching YouTube videos and reading cookbooks devoted to Filipino cuisine. After working for several restaurants, he retired his scrubs and started the pop-up Mansueta’s Filipino Food (named after his grandmother) in 2019 in Charleston. The theme for Cagalanan’s episode was “bizarre foods” which included items like pork uterus, cricket milkshake, rooster testicle stew, and beef kidney. The only ingredient Cagalanan was familiar with was the purple yam, or ube, a popular Filipino ingredient. “I wanted to prove to myself that I’m doing something right and trying to represent Filipino food in that stage…That was the main reason for me.”

Rhuigi Villaseñor, Creative Director of Bally

Rhuigi Villaseñor (Source: Getty Images)

At age 11, Rhuigi Villaseñor, moved with his family from Manila to Los Angeles. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but he was drawn to art and fashion. His first design hit was a $200 cotton T-shirt printed with a black and white paisley bandana pattern that tapped into hip hop's attraction to West Coast Chicano culture. In 2015 he used his mother's laptop to launch Rhude, his luxury ready-to-wear brand without any formal design training, to help his family who struggled after moving from the Philippines. In 2018, rapper Kendrick Lamar wore a pair of $795 Rhude track pants when he accepted his Pulitzer Prize. Ellen DeGeneres and ASAP Rocky are fans. Rhude made $30 million in the last year. “In choosing a creative director for a 170-year-old brand, I wanted a person who would disrupt, and we all saw in Rhuigi the possibility to bring the brand in a new direction. He’s someone who has a direct dialogue with his audience, and through this dialogue he gets a good sense of where society is going,” says Nicolas Girotto, the CEO of Bally. “Rhuigi was on our map for what he was doing with his own brand, but also for his balance of contemporary streetwear and a luxury sensibility.” Rhuigi describes Bally as “a sleeping beauty or a Ferrari that hasn’t been on the road for quite some time. It just needs a new paint job, an oil change, and it’s good to go.”

Angela Kirsten Kulikov, Professional Tennis Player

Angela Kirsten Kulikov (Photo by John McGillen/USC Athletics)

Kulikov played college tennis at the University of Southern California (USC). She won her first professional doubles title on the ITF circuit while still in college at the 2019 Thoreau Tennis Open in the doubles draw, partnering with Rianna Valdes, and her first WTA title at the 2022 Hamburg European Open partnering with Sophie Chang. She has a career-high doubles ranking of world No. 57, achieved on October 24, 2022. Accepting a full-ride scholarship, she graduated from USC with a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science (2020) and a master’s in Applied Psychology (2021) where she also received the Willis O’Hunter Award for the student-athlete with the highest GPA (4.0). Born in Los Angeles to Vadim Kulikov and Filipina Debbie De Jesus, she enjoys playing football and coached her little brother’s football team while having a series of injuries from age 14-16. She came up with the idea to begin posting homemade videos showcasing her football, tennis, and other athletic talents on Instagram through the account @TheQBChick. With early videos accumulating hits in the millions, she recognized an opportunity to create not only a brand, but also a platform to inspire other women to pursue passions “outside the norm.” Her football story has been featured in the L.A. Times, CBS/KCAL9, and Spectrum News. While Kulikov’s primary focus remains professional tennis, she hopes to eventually return to football at some point in her career. Kulikov has also been featured in multiple television, movie, and commercial productions including starring on ABC’s Supermarket Sweep game show, Wilson Sporting Goods’ Clash V2 campaign, Apple’s Apple Watch Series 7 campaign, and Warner Bros’ King Richard film.

(Submitted by Riza de Jesus)

Trinity Mijares, Ballet Dancer

Trinity Mijares (Source: Inquirer.net)

After watching her first live performance of “The Nutcracker,” then three-year-old Mijares knew she wanted to become a ballerina. Her dream came true when she performed in 2021 with the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) as Clara in Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Nutcracker;” she reprised her role in 2022. Born in San Francisco, she now resides in Costa Mesa to advance her ballet training. She trains four hours a day, six days a week at the pre-professional level. This past summer, Mijares had the privilege of working and training with one of her biggest role models, Stella Abrera, the first Filipino American principal ballerina with ABT. Mijares says she is “proud of her heritage and understands how Filipino representation is important and inspires her and others to continue pursuing and working towards their dreams.”

(Submitted by Rommel Mijares)

Agnes Quisumbing, Senior Research Fellow

Quisumbing is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, and leads the cross-cutting research theme on gender. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from the University of the Philippines, Quezon City, was a Fulbright-Hays Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Visiting Fellow at the Economic Growth Center at Yale University, and an economist at the World Bank. She has published widely on gender, intrahousehold allocation, women’s empowerment, property rights, poverty, and economic mobility, and has done field work in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, and the Philippines. She is undertaking impact evaluations of nutrition-sensitive agricultural development programs in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on their impacts on women’s empowerment and gender asset inequality. She is co-developer of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and is co-editor of Gender in Agriculture and Food Security: Closing the Knowledge Gap. She is currently co-developing women’s empowerment metrics for national statistical systems.

Edwin Josue, Alternative Film Producer

Josue has an A.B. Economics degree from San Beda University in Manila. A very popular real-estate broker with Brown Harris Stevens in New York City, he is fondly called the “Filipino mayor of Manhattan.” But it is the alternative film he produced, Ballesteros on My Mind – The Film (Gakka Films, 2022), that is winning the hearts of many families and children and making him renowned worldwide. A documentary animation, it is written by Rey E. de la Cruz and directed by Karlo Garcia Gino. The film is based on a true story of a boy growing up with his family in the small town of Ballesteros in the province of Cagayan in the Philippines. Samiksha Periwal (Cult Critic, June 14, 2022) writes: “The story emphasizes themes such as nostalgia, attachment, hard work, friendship, community living, and so on … The film should definitely be shown to children across all cultures for a great learning experience.” The vision, courage, and determination of Josue in producing the film have been validated by the countless awards he has received, including the following: Best Producer at the Texas Arthouse Festival (Texas); Best Producer, Calcutta International Cult Film Festival (India); and Best Producer, Seoul Independent Film Festival (Korea).

(Submitted by Ivan Kevin Castro)

Ron Rivera, Coach

Rivera, aka “Riverboat Ron” is the football head coach for the Washington Commanders of the National Football League. He said he learned the values of hard work and family from his ancestors, who hailed from the Philippines. His maternal grandfather, Margarito Palma, immigrated to Salinas, California to work in the fields. Palma, who loved sports, made sure Rivera knew how much he supported his grandson – if he scored a touchdown, Rivera would get a dollar or a trip to McDonald’s after the game. Palma died before he could see Rivera play college football for the University of California and before Rivera was selected as an All-American football player. Rivera’s wife is also a Filipino American, who grew up in Vallejo and whose grandparents served in the military. Rivera has emphasized the importance of representation over the course of his career, so he has provided many opportunities to people of diverse backgrounds. "I think the biggest thing is that a lot of people don't know," Rivera said. "I just think people should know a little bit about me in terms of my heritage."

Mndsgn, Record Producer and Songwriter

Mndsgn (Photo by Eric Coleman/Stones Throw Records)

Born Ringgo Ancheta in San Diego, California, Mndsgn was raised in New Jersey, He is the youngest of four in a Filipino family – his mother was a nurse and his father was a Navy man. Ancheta relocated to Los Angeles in 2011 and self-released beat tapes as well as a few projects distributed by labels, Leaving and Fresh Selects, and regularly performed at local hubs such as Low End Theory. “How can we live in a way that is true to ourselves? How can we find beauty in the everyday and unfamiliar?” These are the questions Mndsgn explores through his enthralling music. In 2013, Mndsgn collaborated with Danny Brown on "Sweeney Song," which appeared on Classic Drug References Vol. 1. His first solo studio album for Stones Throw Records, titled Yawn Zen, was released in 2014. He followed up with Body Wash in 2016, an album that drew heavily on ‘80s R&B and boogie which Vinyl Me, Please cited as one of "The 10 Best Stones Throw Albums To Own On Vinyl," before releasing raw, mixtape-style records Snaxand Snaxx in 2018 and 2019. Clash called the latter "an instant classic" and "everything we’ve come to expect and more, from the San Diego beat maker.” In March 2021, Mndsgn announced his third studio album for Stones Throw Records, Rare Pleasure, inspired by R&B, soundtrack music, psychedelia and jazz.

Lorli Villanueva, Actress, Educator and Author

Also known as Prof. Lorli Dima-ala, Villanueva was deputy chair of the Graduate School of Education and Special Education at Touro College and University in New York for 14 years. A respected actor in cinema and theater in the Philippines, Villanueva is a member of the Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA, and she has directed off-Broadway shows in New York City, where she has been a resident since 1999. In 2014, she authored a book, Dancing with the Dictator, describing her encounters with President Ferdinand Marcos. Formerly a University of the Philippines (UP) broadcast communication professor, Lorli was the first Asian commercial actress to have been granted a Fulbright Hays Scholarship to study at Northern Illinois University, where she obtained her master’s degree in communications (major in radio, TV and films) in the ’80s. A founding member of the 56-year-old Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), she was also chairperson of the board of judges of the prestigious Carlos Palanca Literary Awards for several years. Before settling in New York, she served as dean of student affairs at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasay (City University of Pasay). She has received many awards, including the following: Legends and Icons in Philippine Cinema (Film Development Council of the Philippines), Lifetime Achievement Award (United Federation of Fil-Am Teachers), and EDDYS or The Entertainment Editors' Choice (Society of Philippine Entertainment Editors).

(Sent by Rey de la Cruz)

Sources: Google and Wikipedia

The Magazine

Fil-Ams Among The Remarkable And Famous, Part 41