HELLO

My personal story as the daughter of Filipino immigrants and my lived experiences being a BIPOC person working in the marketing and design field makes me committed to helping organizations create meaningful social impact. My parents migrated to Hawai’i for a better life to work in sugar plantation fields that paid low wages which they sent back home to family living in the Phillippines. My parent’s story of migrant labor has ingrained in me humility, resilience, empathy, and a keen awareness of the interplay of context and personal experiences.

My interest in communications and design started when I was 5 years old growing up in a small sugar plantation town on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Summers were spent working at my mom’s little asian grocery store stocking shelves and creating signs to past the time. I created hand drawn store signs using the blank side of cardboard cigarette boxes. I loved to compete in poster contests in grade school and traced logos from vinyl albums and cassette covers of my favorite bands. Communications, art and design has always been a passion since childhood, but I never knew it was a calling until decades later. 

While enrolled at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Communications program, I knew marketing and communications was the field for me. After graduation with a Bachelors of Arts in Communications I worked in the public relations field at the broadcast monitoring firm Dateline Media. I later worked in the video field at the community television station Olelo TV and then as a producer for the University of Hawai’i Globalization Research Center. I enjoyed the creativity of video editing and designing title credits with kinetic type and images. Visual communications was my next career step and I graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in Design at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. I started my design career at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, designing an exhibition entitled Singgalot (Ties That Bind)—Filipinos in America, From Colonial Subjects to Citizens. That experience taught me the power of visual storytelling.

In 2006, I relocated to Seattle to work at the Museum of Flight. I gained valuable experience working on exhibits and educational marketing collateral. I am currently the Associate Creative Director at the University of Washington working on design, brand strategy, marketing and communications campaigns (print, web, digital ads, email, events and video) for the College of Arts & Sciences. I lead the digital content marketing and design team on the development and creation of visual storytelling campaigns and provide brand marketing strategy and art direction for fundraising and student recruitment projects.