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.

Dr. Audrey Cruz, “Barbie Doll” Doctor

“Las Vegas physician Dr. Audrey Cruz is among six global frontline workers honored with a one-of-a-kind Barbie doll created in their image as part of Mattel Inc.’s #ThankYouHeroes program,” reports KLAS Las Vegas. Cruz joined other Asian American doctors to fight racial bias during the pandemic in addition to fighting COVID-19, creating a “positive impact in their communities, inspiring current and future generations to come.” Cruz grew up in Honolulu and earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno before getting her medical degree from the University of Nevada School of Medicine. Mattel, Inc. will donate $5 for each Barbie doctor nurse, and paramedic doll sold at Target to the First Responders Children’s Foundation. “I hope I can represent women of color, women in healthcare, women who are working moms,” Cruz said. “Just being able to represent these people, and just have them know that they are seen.”

Alleluia Panis, Artistic Leader

Panis is a director, choreographer, and non-profit arts leader. She is the Artistic and Executive Director of Kularts, an organization existing since 1985 where artists share their experiences and traditions through contemporary and tribal Filipino arts. After immigrating to San Francisco from the Philippines in the mid-1960s, Panis became a fixture in the South of Market Filipino arts community. Her dance film, ‘She, Who Can See’ was officially selected and screened at the 2018 CAAMFest. She served as a member of National Performance Network’s Artists Committee, and as a board member of Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Brava! For Women in the Arts, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and Dance Bay Area, and an active member of San Francisco’s SOMA Pilipinas, Filipino Cultural Heritage District. She has created over 20 full-length dance theater works that have been presented on stages in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has received numerous awards, including the inaugural Artistic Legacy Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2017 and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Commission for Choreographers for her 2019-2021 dance and film project, ‘In the Belly of the Eagle’.

Dr. Arthur Oliver Romero, Pulmonologist

Dr. Arthur Oliver ROmero (Source; Twitter)

Dr. Romero is the first and only fellowship-trained interventional pulmonologist in Nevada.

University Medical Center, in partnership with University of Nevada, Las Vegas Medicine, has become the first and only hospital in the state to introduce the groundbreaking Ion system which Romero recently demonstrated. It is a robotic-assisted platform for minimally invasive lung biopsy procedures. Providing new levels of precision, reach, and stability when compared with manual biopsy techniques. The Ion system helps address a challenging aspect of lung biopsies by allowing physicians to obtain tissue samples from deep within the lung to help detect cancer, which may help physicians make an early diagnosis. Romero is an assistant professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the UNLV School of Medicine. He is a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. He attended the NIHES/Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands for his MSc in Medical Informatics. He then completed his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary Critical Care at UCSF Fresno. His is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and is board certified in Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine. He also pioneered several technologies in Nevada, being the first pulmonologist to use electromagnetic navigation bronchoscopy for biopsy of previously unreachable lung nodules as well as bronchial thermoplasty, a form of endoscopic treatment for severe asthma.

Jess Dela Merced, Filmmaker

Jess Dela Merced (Source: tisch.nyu.edu)

Dela Merced is a Filipina American writer/director from San Francisco. She graduated from NYU’s Graduate Film program. In 2011 she produced Bleached where she plays a teen who tries to bleach her skin to please her mother. She received the Spike Lee fellowship for Hypebeast, which won multiple awards at festivals in 2014. The movie deals with a trio of teenagers battling racism in the hip-hop community on the night before a new set of coveted sneakers is due to be released. Dela Merced is a 2020 Sundance Episodic Lab fellow and grant recipient. Her short, Wait ‘Til the Wolves Make Nice, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. She was a director in the Disney ABC directing program and one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her feature script, Chickenshit, is a San Francisco Film grant recipient, a Hamptons Screenwriters Lab participant, and was also selected for the Breaking Through the Lens initiative at Cannes. Chickenshit tells the story of a young Black girl in Detroit who joins forces with a ragtag group of boys to save their neighborhood from an arsonist. Her short film, Phony, is about a young Asian American woman with anger management issues, seeking respite from her recent career failures. Produced by Paul Feig, Phony Is now in development as a TV series.

Gina Apostol, Novelist

Apostol was born in Manila and graduated from University of the Philippines Diliman and earned a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. Apostol's fourth novel, Insurrecto, was named by Publishers' Weekly one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 and selected as an Editor's Choice of the NYT. The New York Times calls Insurrecto "a bravura performance...Apostol is a magician with language." It was shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her third book, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 PEN/Open Book Award. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, both won the Juan Laya Prize for the Novel (Philippine National Book Award). She was a fellow at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, and Emily Harvey Foundation, among others. Her essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Gettysburg Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts and grew up in Tacloban, Leyte, in the Philippines. She teaches at the Fieldston School in New York City. She has contributed to the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times and Foreign Policy.

Jerry Vinluan, Superior Court Judge, Santa Cruz, California

Judge Jerry Vinluan (Source: Good Times Santa Cruz)

Governor Gavin Newsom recently named Vinluan to fill a vacancy in the superior court bench. Vinluan, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has worked as a deputy public defender at Biggam, Christensen & Minsloff since 2006 and before that, as deputy alternate public defender at Wallraff & Associates from 2004 to 2006. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Golden Gate University School of Law and began practicing law in 1999. He said his parents instilled in him the lesson of knowing his heritage but never falling back on it as his only attribute. Vinluan said he has studied and been deeply affected by Watsonville’s historically infamous tie to racial oppression involving immigrant Filipino workers. In January 1930, a violent five-day riot broke out, with hundreds of white men armed with pistols and clubs roamed the city’s streets in protest of a dance hall where Filipino men danced with white women. The violence culminated in the shooting death of 22-year-old Fermin Tobera. The 49-year-old Santa Cruz County resident said he feels proud and blessed to be the county’s first judge of Filipino descent.

Christine Bacareza Balance, Artist and Author

Balance is Associate Professor of Performing & Media Arts and Asian American Studies at Cornell University. Her writings on former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, Asian American YouTube artists, Bruno Mars, Glee’s karaoke aesthetics, and spree killer Andrew Cunanan have been published in Women and Performance: a feminist journal, Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS), Women's Studies Quarterly (WSQ), and Theatre Journal. Her first book, Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America (Duke University Press, 2016), examines how the performance and reception of post-World War II Filipino/Filipino American popular music compose Filipino identities, publics, and politics. Balance is collaborating with Prof. Lucy San Pablo Burns (UCLA) on the anthology, California Dreaming: Movement & Place in the Asian American Imaginary (University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming). She is a former board member of KulArts, a Bay Area-based traditional and contemporary Filipino arts organization, and one-eighth of the New York-based indie rock band The Jack Lords Orchestra.

Nephi Garcia, Disney Character Fashion Designer

Nephi Garcia and daughter (Photo by Designer Daddy)

Garcia, aka as Designer Daddy to Disney fans lives in Anaheim, California. He designs elaborate custom gowns, turning ordinary women and girls into Disney princesses. Born and raised in the Philippines, he was introduced to Disney characters when his father brought home a Beauty and the Beast video. His grandmother taught him how to sew. “I was always hanging out underneath her sewing machine waiting for fabric to fall and that’s how I started making my pieces from little scrap materials.” But his parents wanted him to pursue another career so the family can be more financially stable, so Garcia hid his dreams. His sister bought him sketch pads and fabrics. His favorite Disney character is Rapunzel because like her, he felt “trapped in a little town filled with people who did not believe in me.” His wife, Bethanie, supported his dream and challenged him to create a “transformation” dress for their daughter, e.g., Belle’s blue dress in Beauty and the Beast transforms into something else. By 2017, Garcia was mass producing the transformation gowns. He believes that magic is possible and that dreams do come true. “I know there are hardships in relationships. I know there are struggles in family. But if you are committed to each other and put forth the effort, anything is possible. And I absolutely believe that there is such a thing as happily ever after.”

France Viana, Artist

Born in Manila, Philippines, Viana is a multimedia artist, working on photography, painting, collage, video, performance, and installation. Her artworks “interrogate the semiotics of color, spirituality and consciousness, and Filipino American and Venezuelan identity.” She studied art in Switzerland and Spain before moving to California where she received an MFA in Studio Art and a BA in Art History from Mills College in Oakland, California. She photographed hundreds of Bay Area Filipino Americans to index skin color shades and created a custom acrylic color for her project called Kayumanggi (the caramel skin color of Filipinos). In Stop and Smell the Tuyo, Viana strung a smoked fish with mint dental floss above a filled rice cooker, combining myth and humor. She received the Hung Liu Award for Excellence in Studio Art and the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Arts award. Her work chronicles how Filipino immigration is changing and what it means to be American. She is active with SOMA Pilipinas and Philippine International Aid.

Fritz Friedman, Publicist

San Diego Filipino American mayor, Todd Gloria, recently appointed Filipino American Fritz Friedman to the Arts and Culture Commission. He was previously appointed by Governor Brown to the Board of California Humanities. Friedman was in charge of worldwide publicity and corporate communications for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions for 34 years. He is now president of The Fritz Friedman Company, a Los Angeles and San Diego-based production and strategic marketing communications company. He is involved with several productions, including The World of Fear, an anthology of ghost stories around the world and Korematsu vs. the U.S., a biopic about Japanese American civil rights pioneer Fred Korematsu who was imprisoned for refusing to enter the internment camp during WW II. He sits on several boards including Loyola Productions and The Filipino American Library and received awards from The Apl de Ap Foundation, The CAPE Founders Award and The Philippine Bar Association’s Community Service Award among others.

Janet Mendoza Stickmon, Professor

Janet Stickmon (Source: Napa Valley College)

Janet Stickmon is an educator, author, and workshop facilitator. Stickmon has been an educator for over 20 years and is currently a professor of Humanities, specializing in Ethnic Studies, and the Faculty Coordinator of The Cultural Center at Napa Valley College. She is the author of Crushing Soft Rubies, A Memoir; Midnight Peaches; Two O’clock Patience: A Collection of Essays, Poems, and Short Stories on Womanhood and the Spirit, and her latest book, To Black Parents Visiting Earth: Raising Black Children in the 21st Century. Stickmon’s essays have appeared in The Huffington Post, Mutha Magazine, Read to Write Stories, Positively Filipino, and Red and Yellow, Black and Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies (Rutgers University Press, 2017). Stickmon is the founder of CenterJoyPWR™: Strategies for Healing Racial Battle Fatigue, a group coaching program for BIPOC professionals who seek to heal from racial battle fatigue and center joy in their lives. Her books have been used in colleges across the country. As a spoken word artist she has performed at venues across the country. Through her literature and performances, she explores issues of love, motherhood, resilience, ancestral connection, and joy. She holds an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, an M.A. in Religion and Society from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Irvine.

Col. Shirley S. Raguindin, Military Diversity Officer

Raguindin is the Director of Military Equal Opportunity and Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) liaison at the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness. She is responsible for providing military advice and guidance on programs and policies affecting military equal opportunity for 1.4 million active duty military, 1.3 million Guard and Reserve, and 782,000 Department of Defense civilian personnel. Prior to this assignment, she served as Senior Military Liaison, DoD Transformation Agency Enterprise Planning and Investment, Office of the Secretary of Defense. She also served as a colonel in the Air National Guard as Special Assistant to the Director, Air National Guard on Diversity, and advised the Chief, National Guard Bureau; and the Director, ANG Readiness Commander. Throughout her career, she served in a myriad of readiness programs at command and staff levels, leading change through policy, strategic plans, and quality of life issues that directly impact mission readiness. She was commissioned in 1986 as a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program from the University of Hawaii. She is the recipient of the Diversity Training University International Diversity Executive Leadership Award (2014), International Women’s Outstanding Leadership Award (2013), and Diversity Officer Leadership Award by Diversity Best Practices, Inc. She holds a Master of Public Administration from University of Oklahoma and a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology from University of Hawaii.

Source: Google and Wikipedia

The Magazine

Fil-Ams Among The Remarkable And Famous, Part 25