Federal Experience
Joshua is the current appointed Public Information Officer for the U.S. Small Business Administration Arkansas District Office. 

Formerly, Joshua served as the Digital Communications Director and Special Research and Policy Advisor of the Delta Regional Authority (DRA), an independent federal agency with the mission to improve economic opportunities and public infrastructure in rural communities across an eight-state region along the Mississippi River. In this role, Josh oversaw all digital and social media outreach for the 10 million residents of the Delta region, working closely with the DRA board of governors and directly under Federal Co-Chairman Chris A. Masingill, a Presidential Appointee under President Barack Obama. Joshua was responsible for the promotion and growth of the following DRA programs:

• Delta Entrepreneurship Network (DEN) – Identifies and supports small businesses and startups, providing them with $40,00 in technical assistance through workshops and seminars, and introducing them national investors at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week.
• DeltaCorps – Volunteer program in partnership with Americorps and the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to improve outcomes in six focus areas: Economic Opportunity & Workforce Development, Healthy Futures, Education, Disaster Services, Environmental Stewardship, and Veterans and Military Families. Joshua helped launch this program and developed the logo, branding, and website.
• Delta Creative Placemaking Initiative (DCPI) – Partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to stimulate economic and community development in Delta communities by supporting the arts and cultural sectors. Joshua helped launch the DCPI program and promoted it online and also through attending all six workshops held across five states in May – June of 2017.
• Delta Region Community Health Systems Development – Technical Assistance Program – Collaboration with the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to enhance healthcare delivery in rural Delta communities.
• Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) – Medical missions (three per summer) in rural underserved communities in partnership with the U.S. Dept. of Defense. Joshua was the main point of contact for the IRT program.
• States’ Economic Development Assistance Program (SEDAP) – DRA’s main grant funding tool providing direct investment into community-based and regional projects.

As part of the DRA senior leadership team, Joshua instituted an aggressive and proactive communications strategy to increase stakeholder and public engagement with the Agency. Subsequently, DRA website visits, Facebook engagement, and Twitter impressions reached their highest marks in six years, with 2017’s numbers doubling those of 2016. This approach greatly increased awareness of DRA programs and initiatives, resulting in a record number of application submissions for the Delta Entrepreneurship Network and Delta Leadership Institute in 2016-17 compared to previous years.

National & International Engagement
In 2017, Joshua was selected by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APACIS) as one of 33 fellows to participate in their National Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C. Joshua was selected as FYLPRO delegate in 2018. January of 2019, Joshua was elected by his fellow alumni to serve as 2019 FYLPRO Vice President and 2020 President. In this capacity, Joshua works closely with the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C. to continue to support high-performing young Filipino-Americans across the country and nurture relations between the United States and the Philippines in the areas of business, government, nonprofit, and humanitarian efforts.

Local & State Leadership
In his state of Arkansas, Joshua is a graduate of the inaugural 2017 Maumelle Leadership Development Program conducted by the Maumelle Area Chamber of Commerce, a seven-month program limited to 12 fellows and designed to cultivate local community leaders. In August 2018, Joshua was appointed by Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson as one of four citizens on the Elected Officials Salary Committee to analyze the compensation of elected officials in the City of Maumelle and make recommendations to the City Council for the 2019 budget. Joshua was again appointed to this committee by Maumelle Mayor Caleb Norris in January 2020.

In December of 2018, Joshua was appointed by Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde, the chief executive of the county, as a member of the Advisory Board for Pulaski County Youth Services, the branch of Pulaski County Government dedicated to providing enrichment opportunities and educational programs for the county’s youth.

In March 2018, Joshua was selected to be part of the 37th Annual Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism Diversity Panel to discuss marketing strategies to attract more Asian visitors and business to the state. 

In May 2018, Joshua was the first person of Filipino descent to run for the Arkansas State House of Representatives in the state’s history, earning 1/3 of the votes in the primary election in a district with less than a 2% Asian American population. 

Community Engagement
Joshua is an active volunteer in the nonprofit community, serving on the boards of the Designing Hope Foundation, which supports children and adult burn survivors through Arkansas Children’s Hospital in partnership with the Arkansas Fire Fighters Association; Youth Home, Inc., which provides mental health care to underserved children and families; Opera in the Rock, Arkansas’s only opera company, which nurtures local talent and offers musical outreach in schools and public venues; and the Quapaw Quarter Association, which works to preserve Greater Little Rock’s historic places. He also serves on the boards of two international organizations with missions in the Philippines – the Basilia Womens Foundation, which provides shelter and assistance to abused women and children; and the Meguko Foundation (of which he is also U.S. Vice President), which provides scholarships to children living in highly impoverished areas.

Joshua is a charter member of Startup Grind Central Arkansas (powered by Google) which provides technical training, networking, and investment opportunities for local entrepreneurs. He also serves as the Vice Chair of Marketing for the Arkansas State House Society young professional’s auxiliary which supports the Old State House Museum’s school bus fund program to provide transportation for rural students to visit the museum. Joshua has also served on numerous committees for charitable organizations including Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas, Preserve Arkansas (formerly the Arkansas Historic Preservation Alliance), Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, and the Timmons Arts Foundation.

Before moving to Illinois, Louella worked as a musical theater actress for Repertory Philippines and Tanghalang Pilipino in Manila and Theaterworks in Singapore. She also dabbled in Philippine Television acting in soap operas, the Knowledge Channel TV shows and ABS-CBN’s Star Studio Presents. If you lived in Manila in the early 2000s, you may recognize her in the widely popular Selecta Sundae “Jolex” and Lucky Me Spicy Hot Mami TV commercials. 

To the community that she serves, however, she is a leader and a mover in their collective cultural and philanthropic endeavors. Through her passion and leadership, SamaSama Project   whose objective of promoting Filipino Culture through music and the arts have proven themselves to be outstanding representatives of the community in established cultural events in  Illinois winning the “Battle of the bands 2017” held in Elgin as well as internationally such as Madrid, Spain. She has spearheaded charity events through the Illinois Philippines Recovery Operations ILPRO that gathered hundreds of volunteers to raise money to send to the victims of a number of natural calamities that hit the Philippines. 

In  the  arts,  she  has  utilized  her  creative  talent  in  conceptualizing,  co-writing and  performing theatrical  pieces that  touch  on  her people’s struggles and successes with the hope of giving a voice to the community as Filipinos, ethnic minorities  and  most  importantly  as  Americans. Moreover, Louella has and continues to contribute immensely in paving the way for Filipino Arts and Fil-American artists to be on the cultural map of Illinois with performances invitations and shows throughout the year and annual ground breaking concerts that showcase  Filipino music, dance and theater arts to a broader audience.

Louella is distinctively an artist with a strong commitment to promoting Filipino culture and contributing to the Filipino-American community in the Midwest. A strong woman who wears many hats, she works as Senior Architect for Platform Business Product – Big Data in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (HCSC) with close to 20 years of IT experience and serves as Board of Director for the Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Chicago (PACCGC), Filipino Musicians of Chicago (FMOC), Midwest Pilipino American Coalition (MPAC), the League of Volunteers for Relief Expeditions (LOVE) and the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO). She is also an Ambassador for a 44K+ strong facebook group called Subtle Filipino Traits. She is passionate about sharing Filipino culture in the modern world and actively supports all outstanding Filipinos around the globe. 

Dr. Palma was a Family Medicine resident at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center in Lawrence, Massachusetts prior to training in Preventive Medicine  at Cook County Health in Chicago, IL, one of the oldest and largest safety-net health systems in the US. She graduated with a Masters of Public Health from Northwestern University in June 2020 and serves on the Organization of Resident Representatives for the American Association of Medical Colleges. Dr. Palma also serves as a board member of FYLPRO, a leadership program affiliated with the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC and the Ayala Foundation, Inc. Her academic interests include immigrant and refugee health, advocacy for health equity and addressing health disparities, and mentorship of underrepresented students in medicine. 

Dr. Palma  also advocates for the Filipino community as an inaugural member of the Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellowship anthology, We the Interwoven, for emerging Iowan writers from immigrant backgrounds. Exploring themes of migration, belonging, and home in the Filipino diaspora, her writing has been featured in the Des Moines Art Festival, the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature Book Festival, and the non-circulating Pilipinx American Library exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Asian Art.

She serves on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Technical Advisory Group to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 251 (TC251), the official body that developed and manages international standards on asset management. In her role as Secretary to ISO/TC251 in the development of a new standard, ISO 55011 – Guidance for Public Policy, she collaborates with other leaders around the world to share lessons learned and help governments improve their asset management practices.

Tiffany has been recognized for her contributions to facilitate professional opportunities for women and underserved communities and to the improvement of inclusion and diversity in the industry as a recipient of the Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award. After launching the Young Filipino Professional Association’s first mentorship program, Tiffany founded and chaired the inaugural Glass Ceiling Task Forces for the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington DC Chapters, respectively, of Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) – the transportation industry’s premier professional association. She spearheaded first-of-its-kind studies to measure gender diversity and the status of women in the local transportation industry, informing future actions to realize the organization’s mission and close the transportation workforce gap. Tiffany is currently leading a series of global COVID-19 efforts to improve community resilience in the “new normal” and serves on the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO) COVID-19 Task Force aimed to provide relief support to Filipino community members in the US and the Philippines. 

In addition to serving as a Board of Director for the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO), Krystle serves as Capital Region Chair and Fil-Am Vote Manager for the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, President for the Philippine American Foundation for Charities, Task Force Member of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns – DC Chapter, Health Equity Ambassador for the American Psychological Association, and Steering Committee Member for the National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health. Krystle earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Neurobiology & Physiology from the Honors College at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Jennifer is active in the Fil-Am community in the New England area. She is the chair for the Philippine-American Mainstream Advocacy for Nonpartisan Associations (PAMANA) and is a member of the Filipino American Lawyers Association of Massachusetts (FALA Mass). Jennifer is also served on the board for the Massachusetts Youth Leadership Foundation. 

Jennifer received her J.D. from Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island and her B.A. from Colby College in Waterville, Maine where she founded the Colby Filipino Club and played for the women’s rugby team. 

• Follow Tony on IG & Twitter @TonyRosaSpeaks  
• Learn more about his work by visiting TonyRosaSpeaks.com 

He is the current President of the International Society of Filipinos in Finance and Accounting, ISFFA, Chicago Chapter. They recently launched the first ever Chicago Filipino Restaurant Week. He is also the President of Midwest Pilipino American Coalition established in 2019 to promote collaboration amongst Filipino American community organizations. He is also a Filipino Youth Leadership Program Awardee, Batch FYLPRO 2014. He was chosen by the former Philippine Ambassador to the United States, Honorable Jose Cuisia. He founded a social entrepreneur business, Ambension Silk Enterprise, in collaboration with Chicagoland Gawad Kalinga supporters to help build the eri silk industry in the Philippines and provide livelihood work for weavers and farmers. It is incubated at Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm at Angat, Bulacan.

Donny has had several professional roles, including Design Systems Engineer, Project Manager, Program Manager, and Engineering Manager.  He’s worked in Defense Aerospace, Commercial Aerospace, Consumer Medical Technologies, and Consumer Technologies.

Donny also does work with local and national Filipino American communities advocating socio-economic advancement through professional development and leadership.  He’s a native of Seattle, Washington and currently lives in San Francisco, California, working for Amazon Lab126 in Silicon Valley with his wife and two dogs.

Lakhi Siap has more than 10 years of experience in multicultural & millennial media marketing, public relations and community outreach. He has consulted with high profile companies and organizations such as Pepsico, Mcdonald’s, AT&T, and the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the US State department. In 2016, Lakhi was awarded President Obama’s Volunteer Service Award for Community Service and given the Distinguished Young Asian Professional Award by Asian Chronicle USA Cable Access TV. He was chosen by the former Philippine Ambassador to the US, Jose Cuisia Jr., to be part of the Filipino American Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO) in 2015. He is on the board and volunteers for numerous Asian American organizations throughout the Chicagoland area.

As a 2015 Second City Chicago Bob Curry Fellow, he has become the living embodiment of his ancestors’ wildest dreams. He has understudied Second City Main Stages (A Red Line Runs Through It) and holds stand-up credits in the NBC Breakout Comedy Festival, CBS’s Diversity Showcase, and was a Featured Poet in Fifth Star Honors: A Night Dedicated to the Artists of Chicago at Pritzker Pavillion on behalf of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. His television credits include a guest spot in EMPIRE on FOX and a special guest spot on CNNPhilippines in promotion of Manila Improv Festival in 2017.

TJ was the first Filipino-American Diversity and Inclusion Facilitator for Second City’s Business to Business Department SCWorks, was awarded the Jim Zulevic Award for Community Excellence and became the first Filipino-American faculty member of The Second City Training Center as well as the first Filipino-American faculty member of the historical Annoyance Theater and iO Improv Olympic Theater. In 2016, TJ co-founded and served as Artistic Director of the World Famous Improvised-Spoken Word Collective PREACH, where he has performed at festivals and taught workshops with universities and theaters across the US and in the Philippines. 

He continues to use his platform to serve and advance underserved communities as a creative consultant to community organizations including but not limited to: the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO) as Board Member and COVID-19 Task Force Member, the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C, and the Philippine American Foundation for Charities (PAFC). His most recent collaboration, in partnership with TaxWhiz Mon Abrea and the Asian Consulting Group, resulted in the release of the TaxWhiz App – a mobile all-in-one application tailored for the Philippine market to make taxes easily understandable, accessible, and convenient to do on the go.

At the heart of TJ’s creative profession is being a teaching artist. While in Chicago he was a teaching artist for the American Theater Company, Mudlark Children’s Theater Company, The Poetry Center of Chicago, Chicago Improv Productions, Silk Road Rising Theater, Theater Unspeakable, and collaborate with After School Matters on numerous programs and events geared towards Youth Advocacy and Mentorship. In his return to Arkansas, he has collaborated with UALR’S Children’s International Program and became the first Filipino faculty member for The Arkansas Repertory Theater.

Mark received a B.A. with Highest Honors in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan and a J.D. with Certificate in International Law from the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he was president of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, publications editor of the Annals of Health Law, and associate editor of the Loyola University Chicago International Law Review.

Professionally, Fred is the Mabuhay Branch and Business Development Coordinator for Mabuhay Credit Union, which is among the very first full-service Financial Institution to specifically help the Filipino and greater Community in Southern California and beyond with their financial services needs. Fred is a proud recipient of the Top Outstanding Pilipino (TOP) award for Community Leadership, as well as having been among the awardees for Outstanding Filipino Americans in the USA.

Personally, Fred is the oldest of Jose Emmanuel & Luz’ 6 children, has been married to his wife June Anne for the past 14 years, and they have 3 children together – Faith Anne (13 years old), Jedrick Alain (10 y.o.), and Franchesca Anne (2 y.o.).

Mr. Zagala is also the CEO and Project Lead of the mobile app Bay Area Casual Carpoolers, known as BACC. Despite the challenges of developing a start-up in a crowded marketplace, BACC has a gained a small, but growing market share and is rising in registered users through the efforts of a dedicated grassroots, word-of-mouth community of daily active users despite minimal marketing spend. Kevin graduated summa cum laude from UMT Arlington Virginia and is a member of the Delta Epsilon Tau Honor Society. In his free time, he enjoys playing basketball, video games, reading and spending time with his family.