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.

Cristina Patwa, Founder of Enroot

After Patwa’s family from Davao was held at gunpoint sometime in the 1980s, the family moved to Flushing, Queens in New York City. Patwa “worked with the likes of J.J. Abrams, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt before tapping into her Filipino heritage to launch Enroot, a Los Angeles-based and certified B-corp beverage company she founded in 2019 alongside Pitt and Hollywood producer, John Fogelman,” according to INC. magazine. “Created in partnership with the James Beard Foundation, Enroot’s organic teas pay homage to Patwa’s grandmother, a small-scale farmer and food entrepreneur in the southern Philippines who taught her granddaughter a critical business lesson.” That lesson was: “Be proud of who I am.” Her first job after graduating from business school was creating video games, apparel, and DVDs around hit shows like Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy and J.J. Abrams’ Lost. Next she joined the William Morris Agency where she helped make media, movies, and TV out of multimillion toy franchises like Transformers, GI Joe, and My Little Pony. She started a TV network and lifestyle studio with John Fogelman called El Rey, and one of their projects was helping Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sell olive oil through their wine-making business. Enroot tea has many flavors – sparkling raspberry, mint, white peony tea, mango, turmeric, ginger, and guayusa – all of which bring Patwa back to her grandmother’s farm. The recipes won Best New Organic Beverage at the 2020 NEXTY Awards. Her grandmother is 95 years old, and she teared up when she found out her granddaughter was doing this for her.

Wan Ling Martello, Business Executive

Born in the Philippines of Chinese and Filipino heritage, Ling has a Bachelor of Science in business administration and accounting from the University of the Philippines and an MBA from the University of Minnesota. From 2005 to 2011, she held various executive positions at Walmart, including Executive Vice President of Global Commerce. From 2011 to 2018, she worked for Nestle, the world’s largest food company as executive vice president in Switzerland. In 2018, she was ranked 9th on Forbes’ list of most powerful women in business outside of the U.S. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of Alibaba, Uber and Stellantis. She recently joined the Boston-based, private-equity firm, BayPine.

Tony and Gail Alvarez, Philanthropists

Gail and Tony Alvarez (Source: Getty Images)

The couple immigrated from the Philippines in 1969. Tony co-founded in 1983 A&M (Alvarez & Marsal), a global professional services firm that provides restructuring, enterprise performance improvement, and business advisory services to corporations, private equity firms, and the public sector. The company has grown from three employees to 5,200 professionals around the world, with operations in 25+ countries and 65+ offices on four continents. Tony graduated from De La Salle College in the Philippines and completed his MBA at NYU Stern School of Business. Tony and Gail co-founded the Alvarez Foundation with operations in the U.S. and the Philippines focusing on education, disaster relief, medical research, and assistance to the poor and needy.

Rex Navarrete, Comedian

Navarrete’s parents immigrated to the U.S. in 1969, settling in Chicago. Rex was later reunited with his parents when he was three years old. The family settled in South San Francisco, California where he spent the rest of his childhood. He graduated from San Francisco State University, majoring in film and Asian American studies. Growing up in South San Francisco during the ‘80s, Navarrete secretly studied comedy. He says Eddie Murphy's records gave him his first lesson in real stand-up and storytelling in middle school. After a college professor convinced him to bring his own jokes to the stage, he found comedy as a way to celebrate his Filipino heritage and voice his thoughts on important issues that weren’t always being talked about. He has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In 2020, he started “The Flip Chronicles” podcast.

Baldomero M. Olivera, Ph.D., Chemist and Professor

Baldomero M. Olivera, Ph.D. (Source: HHMI)

Olivera is a Filipino chemist known for discovering many cone snail toxins important for neuroscience. These molecules, called conotoxins, led to a breakthrough in the study of ion channels and neuromuscular synapses. Several peptides discovered in Olivera’s laboratory reached human clinical trials and one (Prialt) has been approved for the treatment of intractable pain. He graduated from the University of the Philippines with a B.S. in Chemistry, from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena with Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry, and from Stanford University in Palo Alto with a post-doctoral work in Biochemistry. He is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Utah. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the U.S. National Academy of Science, and the Institute of Medicine. He was given the Outstanding Alumni Award of Caltech, the Redi Award from the International Society for Toxicology, and the Harvard Foundation Scientist of the Year 2007 Award. As an HHMI professor, Dr. Olivera has implemented an outreach program to instill an interest in science in young students by educating them about scientific principles they can observe in the organisms that they see every day.

Pat D. Gacoscos, Vice Mayor, Union City, California

Pat D. Gacoscos (Source: Facebook)

Gacoscos was first elected to the Union City Council in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. She was Vice Mayor in 2012 and 2017. Her term ends in 2022. Previously, she held two elective positions: a Trustee for the New Haven Unified School District where she helped convert the large school into “smaller houses,” opened school-based health clinics, and helped introduce new language courses that reflected the diverse population of Union City; and a Director for the Union Sanitary District where she served for six years. She is Union City representative to Alameda County Housing and Library commissions; liaison to City/School Partnership Committee and Union City Chamber of Commerce. She chairs the Union City Sister Cities Committee. She started her community involvement in 1980, volunteering with the Filipino American United Catholics of the East Bay, the Filipino American Council, and the Human Relations Commissions for Union City and Alameda County. She is an advocate for education, having been a classroom teacher in the Philippines before immigrating to the United States in 1973. She has received several awards including a Union City Local Hero, Community Spirit Award Recipient, Women Trailblazer, Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow, and U.S. 100 Most Influential Filipino Women.

Aisha Ibrahim, Chef

Ibrahim is the seventh chef in the 70-year history of Canlis, a fine dining destination in Seattle, and the first female executive chef. Her resume includes being a sous chef at Manresa, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in California, a chef at Azurmendi in Spain and its sister restaurant, Aziamendi in Thailand. The feast Ibrahim composed for the Canlis family for her test run included Southeast Asian influences with flavors from Northern California, Japan, and Spain. The Canlis family reaction? “She blew us out of the water.” It wasn’t just Ibrahim’s culinary skill that endeared her to the Canlis brothers. “More than making the best food, she was the best leader of people. We want to be part of rebuilding a broken industry. She’s the best person to help us do that,” Brian Canlis said. Ibrahim immigrated to the U.S. at age six from Mindanao. She identifies as gay.

Dr. Angel V. Rodis, Pulmonologist

Rodis is a pulmonologist and critical care medical specialist in Marlton, New Jersey and is affiliated with multiple hospitals in the area, including Virtua Marlton Hospital and Virtua Memorial Hospital. He received his medical degree from De La Salle University College of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine at St. Peter’s Medical Center and a fellowship at the University at Buffalo in pulmonary disease. Philadelphia Magazine named Rodis among the Top Doctors in 2021 in pulmonary disease.

Kay Trinidad, Broadway Actor

Trinidad’s parents, Luis and Imelda, both immigrated to the U.S. from Quezon City, Philippines and met each other on a blind date in New York City. Kay went to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She also attended the Lee Strasberg Institute for Theatre and Film. She left school a year and a half through when she was cast in the New York Premiere of BARE: A Pop Opera in the role of Diane Lee. She joined the Actors Equity Union with that production. She made her Broadway Debut as Aquata in Disney's The Little Mermaid. Some of her favorite roles include one of the Fates from Hadestown, Aquata from The Little Mermaid, Marcy Park from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Tuptim from The King and I, and Aysha from Children of Eden. She met her husband, Mike Karns, in the production of Allegiance. The couple lives in Hamilton Heights, New York with their two pups, Reno and Weezy.

DJ QBert, Disc Jockey

Richard Quitevis, aka DJ QBert, was born to Filipino immigrants hailing from Bacolod, Negros Occidental and Ilocos Sur. He grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Balboa High School. He started playing with records at the age of 15. It was in the school cafeteria that he first met Mix Master Mike in a DJ battle; the two have been good friends ever since. He was influenced by the street performers and graffiti artists of the local hip hop community in the mid-1980s. QBert started his musical career in a group called FM20 with Mix Master Mike and DJ Apollo in 1990. They won the Disco Mix Club World DJ Championship world title in 1992. He was also one of the founding members of the band, Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the first one to apply the band concept to turntablism, layering drums, basslines, and scratch solos on top of each other. In 2006, he introduced the QBert turntable cartridge, a model put out by Ortofon, and in 2009, he launched the QBert Skratch University, an interactive online learning school and community for DJs through the ArtistWorks website. In 2016, he was awarded the DMC Legend jacket.

Noel “Sonny” Izon, Documentary Filmmaker

Noel “Sonny” Izon (Source: SDSU Media Center)

Izon Immigrated to the U.S. in 1967. He has won many national awards for his work, which includes some 100 nationally televised programs done mainly for PBS and also for National Geographic Television. His company, Interactive Communication Technology (ICT), coordinated the visual program for Vice-President Dick Cheney’s inaugural salute to American veterans and created For Our Tomorrows, a video tribute to veterans for the event. Among his many documentary films are Everglades, In the Spirit of Stradivarius, Navaho Sandpainting, Singapore Street Opera, and Cameras on Move—all for National Geographic Television. He also was the producer of Pearls, the first PBS series on Asians in America. He has done numerous films and videos for the U.S. government, including several for the White House, and recently completed a video to teach Korean and other Asian immigrants about the U.S. justice system. Izon spent ten years at PBS affiliate WNVT-Virginia and at the Educational Film Center as a writer/producer. He graduated with honors from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in English Literature. His most famous work, An Untold Triumph, tells the story of 7,000 Filipino-American soldiers during World War II who volunteered for the U.S Army to free their homeland from the Japanese. The film won the audience award at the Hawaii International Film Festival in 2002. His latest film, An Open Door, recounts how the Philippines gave sanctuary to 1,300 Jews during the Holocaust. The film was awarded Best Picture at the White Nights Film Festival in St, Petersburg, Russia, and Best Documentary at the Bakersfield Film Festival.

Jaygee Macapugay, Actress and Producer

Macapugay is an original cast member of School of Rock on Broadway. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign with an advertising degree. She moved to Orlando when she got the part of a performer in Disneyworld at the Tarzan Rocks show at Animal Kingdom. She later played the role of Pocahontas. Then she moved on to several regional theater productions including The King and I and Miss Saigon. She also played the lead role of Imelda Marcos in Here Lies Love at the Public Theater. “Played in stirring voice and with great hauteur by Jaygee Macapugay, this poor, gushingly innocent small-town beauty queen transforms herself into an enchantress,” one critic said. Another wrote: “Jaygee Macapugay from the Off-Broadway production, steps into Imelda’s shoes, and they fit beautifully. She has a lovely voice and believable acting chops.”

The Magazine

Fil-Ams Among The Remarkable And Famous, Part 22