10 exemplary Filipinas who have been making a mark in their respective fields

Corporate lawyer, social impact investor and entrepreneur

“The contributions of women across various fields have been profound and transformative, shaping the course of history, technology, science, human rights, the arts and more,” says Geraldine Acuña-Sunshine, co-founder and president of the board of trustees of the Philippine Living Heritage Initiative. As a longstanding champion of education, healthcare, social entrepreneurship and community development, Acuña-Sunshine serves on several boards, many of which are based at Harvard University, her alma mater. This made her the first Filipina to serve on the university’s Governing Boards.

“Women today enjoy freedoms and advances because of the courageous women who went ahead,” she says. “One of the best ways we can honour them is to also pave the way for the next generation of young women leaders.”

One of her recent projects was the launch of Khan Academy Philippines, deemed the most effective ed-tech platform used by students in the US and over 120 million learners worldwide. “By introducing this free platform in the Philippine public schools, we hope to ease teachers’ workloads and provide students the capacity to master maths, science and more skills,” she says. Another thing that keeps her busy nowadays is finding solutions to a Filipino disease called X-linked Dystonia Parkinsonism. She is spearheading ongoing genomics and therapeutic studies and trials to find a cure for this.

“Providing clinical care to over 500 [mostly indigent] patients throughout the Philippines has been challenging but well worth my investment and time,” Acuña-Sunshine says.

Acuña-Sunshine believes that each of us has a unique gift and that everyone is born to share this gift to the world. In this respect, she feels blessed and humbled to have enjoyed a fruitful career as a lawyer and social impact entrepreneur and be able to use this as a force for good. But amid the accolades and her accomplishments, she says she is most proud of being a mother to her beloved children Ted, David and Sophie.

“The people I help, whether patients in my free clinics or the students I advocate for, inspire me every day,” Acuña-Sunshine says. “They remind me that blessings shared with others always come back in innumerable ways and that trying to make the world a better place is, in many ways, its reward.”

More from Tatler: Opinion: Eliminating gender disparities in rural education and driving a more inclusive environment is key to a more equal society

CEO of Medilink Network, Inc

She started learning to code and assemble hardware through her family’s business, Equitable Computer Services—one of the country’s most progressive computer solutions providers. This eventually became the launching pad for Esther Go to found MediLink Network, Inc. Now a recognised institution in the field, the company revolutionised healthcare by providing solutions that are not only efficient but also accessible and affordable through its innovative technology services.

Go’s unwavering dedication to health and technology landed her a spot on Forbes’ 2024 list of 50 over 50 in Asia, citing her leadership of an “electronic health-tech firm for nearly 20 years, growing the company to connect more than 200,000 physicians with more than two million patients in the Philippines”.

“By leveraging technology, we aim to provide efficient, accessible and affordable healthcare in the communities we serve by mediating trusted transactions in the healthcare ecosystem that consists of patients, healthcare providers and insurers,” Go says in an interview with Ernst & Young. “We also aim to remove the fraud and inefficiencies in the healthcare system.”

Go holds a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics from Smith College. During these years, she dabbled in various roles in different sectors, including non-governmental organisations, consulting, healthcare and banking. Ernst & Young recognised her as the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019. She is also a director of other Philippine corporations, including Security Bank, Equicom Health Services, and Equicom Savings Bank.

A trailblazer with nearly two decades at the helm of Medilink Networks, Go is a formidable force in the electronic health-tech scene. Her leadership steered the company to unprecedented heights and solidified her status as a successful woman in her own right.

Read also: 6 innovators using AI to transform healthcare, education, sports and more

Story artist, Walt Disney Animation Studio

She is among the artists who bring life to the stories from Walt Disney Studios. Born and raised by her Filipino parents in the United States, Josie Trinidad studied English Literature and Fine Arts at the University of California—Los Angeles.

She worked as an illustrator on animated advertisements for MGA Entertainment and Klasky Csupo. She joined the Disney team in 2004 as a story apprentice. Once she completed training, she was immediately hired as a story artist, from which her career soared.

Today, her filmography includes How to Hook up Your Home Theatre (2007); The Princess and the Frog (2009); Tangled (2010); Wreck-It- Ralph (2012); Big Hero 6 (2014); Frozen II (2019); Raya and the Last Dragon (2021); Encanto (2021); Strange World (2022); and most recently, Wish (2023).

In an interview, Trinidad shares the working dynamics among the Disney animators. “The process at Walt Disney Animation Studios is very collaborative. One of the things I love is how our ideas can come from anywhere—from animators, layout artists, story artists and story trusts [individuals who are not directly involved in the project],” she shares.

She adds that the team encourages people to send their “notes and thoughts” so they can find more ideas and information. “If something is not working, we throw it out,” Trinidad says.

Read also: Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon: Southeast Asian and Filipino cultural references

42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Award winner for outstanding music composition

Trials and frustrations go with the territory of being an artist, but that didn’t stop this young music-lover. She took piano, guitar and voice lessons as a child, and while her siblings dropped the lessons, she fell in love with music. She went on to join her local church choir and even formed a band as a seventh grader. This passion came to fruition in 2021 when she received the award for Outstanding Music Composition at the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards for her work in the BBC documentary Primates. She was also given the ASCAP Foundation Michelle & Dean Kay Award, which is given to emerging composers in the Los Angeles area.

She previously worked as an in-house composer at Bleeding Fingers, a collective founded by the critically-lauded producer Hans Zimmer. The small community served as a platform for her to polish up her musical depth, and she often collaborated with directors on musical scores.

Her music can be heard in various film and television projects, including Island of the Sea Wolves (2022), Eden: Untamed Planet (2021), Apollo: The Forgotten Films (2019) and Billie & Emma (2018).

She credits her childhood guitar and piano lessons for honing her love for music, which she describes as telling a story without words. Citing insecurity as a teenager, she stopped composing songs during this period, choosing to pursue a management degree at Ateneo de Manila University. But the lure of a first love is too strong, so in 2010, she decided to learn music production, taking one-on-one lessons with veteran producer and songwriter Jimmy Antiporda. She went on to finish her music education at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).

She resides in Los Angeles with her husband. Her work is heavily influenced by classical, orchestral, rock, and pop music, and she experiments with blending all genres.

Read more: Are we Filipinos because we love music, or do we love music because we are Filipinos?

Visual artist

A talented artist and designer trained in painting and psychology, Rebie Ramoso explores social issues like identity, hope, struggle, aspiration and poverty from a psychological perspective. Her work can be described as “an intimate reflection of ourselves” as she analyses the psycho-emotional aspects of the human experience.

Her 2019 solo exhibition titled The Stories That Write Us features works that touch on different transitions experienced by women—from falling in love and getting married to giving birth and being with a partner.

Armed with a psychology degree from Ateneo de Manila University and a strong passion for the arts, Ramoso draws inspiration from projective techniques in psychology and uses it to invoke deep-seated emotions from the viewer. Whatever medium she chooses—acrylic, watercolour, digital technology, or ink—the one connecting thread for all of them is that they are meant to inspire, disturb, challenge and mesmerise.

Her exhibits have been featured in multiple international events and galleries like the United States, Belgium, Spain and Italy. Ramoso received the Lorenzo il Magnifico International Award—Special Commendation from the Jury in New Media Art at the 14th Florence Biennale in 2023 and the Special Merit award at the 5th Annual All Women Online Art Exhibition by Light Space and Time Gallery in the United States. She won the bronze in Accessories Design and an honourable mention in Textile Design, Accessories Design and Sustainable Fashion at the 15th International Design Awards.

When Ramoso was featured in the Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea, the book highlighted her artistic research: “The fruit of the multifaceted training, open both to the field of art and to that of psychology, Ramoso’s works investigate the sphere of memory, of gender identity, a body which derives from a real lens of sexuality, poverty and motherhood, showing the viewer a profound and extremely radical journey through the psycho-emotional realm of human experience.”

More from Tatler: Herstory of Kasibulan, a sisterhood of women artists

Nutritionist and analogue astronaut

An early childhood dream of exploring the cosmos led this nutritionist to make history. For six days, on the isolated slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, she experienced what it would be like to live beyond the orbit. She became the first Filipina to simulate extreme space conditions as an analogue astronaut.

Analogue astronauts play an essential role in testing and simulating deep space missions. They set the groundwork for the next phase of human exploration beyond Earth. The mission entailed discovering potential habitats viable for human survival while mapping out geological landscapes and performing astrobiological fieldwork.

Thanks to her background in community nutrition from the University of the Philippines Diliman, she could apply as a crew member at the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), a man-made habitat located two-and-a-half kilometres above sea level. She described the dome as “looking like an alien from afar”, the only structure seen in a landscape of black lava rocks and red soil.

She shared in a Facebook post, “From outside the dome, in my space suit, I could see the Keck observatory, high and mighty and quiet. I would look at it, marvel and chuckle to myself at a joke that only I can understand.”

During her six-day mission, she acted as a nutrition specialist and medical officer whose main priority revolved around protecting the well-being of her fellow researchers. Atienza’s team had to replicate the distance between Earth and Mars by intentionally causing delays in their communication system.

Though the country’s opportunities for space exploration remain limited, her involvement in the analogue mission opens the doors for everyone including the Filipinos to dare to explore astronomical feats.

Read also: The hidden stories of women in NASA

Minister of Small Business of Canada and first Filipina-Canadian member of Parliament

Elected in 2021, Rechie Valdez made headlines as the first Filipina Member of Parliament for Mississauga—Streetsville, Ontario. Since her election, she has participated in many different committees in the House of Commons like the Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Agri-Food. In 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Valdez as the new Minister of Small Business—giving her a better platform to represent small businesses, her community and women.

Before devoting herself to politics, Valdez worked as a corporate banker for more than 15 years, after which she pursued her passion for baking cakes. In 2017, she co-founded a Filipino-themed dessert business, and in 2021, she became a contestant in a reality television baking competition—The Big Bake. A woman of many potent convictions, Valdez continuously uses her platform to promote Filipino-owned businesses in Canada while also involving herself in philanthropic causes like basketball tournaments to raise funds for children’s charities. From advocating for fighting climate change and promoting entrepreneurship to addressing the gender pay gap and healthcare investments, Valdez prides herself in doing what she loves on a much larger scale.

In 2022, Valdez sponsored the bill to establish a National Women’s Entrepreneurship Day to empower women to participate actively in the economy. She also jointly seconded the bill establishing a National Indigenous Teachers Day and another bill creating a national framework on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

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