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This Book Will Change Your Perspective On Life
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44 – Richmond Mayupao / Artist & Barber Talks About Creativity, Identity, and Entrepreneurship
Richmond Mayupao is a barber, artist, creative, and entrepreneur based out of Union City, CA. While he's been cutting hair for years, he's also an active artist and designer. He's released a number of shirt projects that have quickly sold out and he’s currently releasing work under Cutty Flamenko. In this episode, he shares about his creative process, how he views himself as an artist and the work that he creates, and a general conversation about creativity and identity.
43 – Stephanie Balon / Mental Health Therapist, Social Enterprise Center, FMHI-SMC
Stephanie Garma Balón, MA, AMFT (she/her) is a second-gen, Pinay-American, & proud Mama—born/raised on occupied land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, AKA: Daly City/San Francisco, and of Ilokano & Visayan decent. As an Expressive Arts Therapist at StarVista in North San Mateo County (SMC) providing individual and group therapy to youth, parents, and families, Steph leans on her belief in the transformative healing power of the arts. This inspires her to intentionally integrate ritual, visual art, writing, and poetry in her professional and personal practice, especially as it relates to her continuous decolonial healing journey. Steph’s work is rooted in trauma-informed care, narrative & relational-cultural therapeutic approaches. She has over 20 years of experience in the non-profit sector and has an extensive community mental health advocacy background addressing health inequities amongst underserved populations, namely within the Filipinx community. She is a co-chair of the Filipino Mental Health Initiative of SMC, which was awarded a 2.6M grant by the State of California to launch a Social Enterprise Cultural Center for the Filipino American demographic in Daly City.
Kuya Book 01 – Coming Full Circle by Leny Strobel / Overview & Thoughts
New project! This is the first experiment of exploring books on the podcast. I'll be giving an overview Leny Strobel's Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post-1965 Filipino Americans. This is a pivotal book in FilAm literature and it has a lot of wisdom and lessons within it. It's an informal overview, with specific quotes thrown in to highlight the main takeaways. Coming Full Circle is a project of decolonization based off interviews with post-1965 Filipino Americans . Through a process that Strobel calls "fishing for knowledge" through books and interviews, she organizes themes of decolonization under the categories of Naming, Reflection, and Action. This framework is greatly influenced by Paulo Friere and his idea that oppressed peoples need to name the source of their oppression before they can enact change upon it. 11 generative themes of decolonization are presented, alongside a literature review of relevant material and research.
42 – Rich Bustos / LinkedIn Software Engineer Shares Insights on Coding, Minimalism, and Investing
Rich Bustos is a Filipino American engineer, videographer, and financial minimalist. He currently works as a front-end developer at LinkedIn, where he's been at for seven years. Entering the company through an internship with Year Up, Rich shares about how he was hired on even if he didn't know how to code. The passion and drive in him opened up doors and led to his current career and financial stability. In this episode, we go over his entry into the workforce through Year Up, and organization that helps under-connected youth enter the tech industry. We talk about how minimalism and meditation helped Rich work through anxiety and panic attacks. Rich also shares a lot of reflections about financial stability and investing—a very important thing for our communities to learn and develop an understanding for.