Fly Pinays Leadership Summit – My Experience

On Saturday March 23, 2024, the 8th Annual Fly Pinays Leadership Summit was held. Filipinas, vendors, speakers, and guests come from all over the Bay Area and the U.S to come perform and share their stories. Approximately two hundred participants come together for the Fly Pinays Summit every March to celebrate Women’s History Month. This year the Summit took place in Gullo 2, at our charming Evergreen Valley College’s Campus.

As a participant at the 2024 event, I took part in various group activities, listened to panels, and the keynote speaker presentation. I was immersed in the culture of the Philippines through a phenomenal Tagalog musical opera performance done by “Kaelyn Howard.” Her talent had the audience captivated by her angelic voice and moved many people’s hearts. The meditation and grounding session by Isabel Bagsik focused on returning us to our senses. We did this by grounding ourselves through deepening and controlling our breath. I found this to be extremely helpful as I struggle with anxiety from big crowds. The fashion show featured cultural fashion clothing by the company “Lola Weavers” with the models being some audience members and volunteers that helped set up the event. The pieces featured included the barong, and baro’t saya.

I participated in workshops that helped me develop professionally and personally. The workshops took place in the Cedro Building and each participant had the chance to go to two workshops. The first workshop block I attended was a “Financial Literacy: Building Savings and Wealth” workshop held by Ellen Rale and the second workshop block was “Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality” presented by Celeste Franciso. For more information on the workshops, I suggest reading on the program workshop descriptions linked below!

Thanks to the wonderful help of Dr. Nievera-Lozano, I was able to go to this event that had an amazing group of talented supportive women at no cost. The community and inspiration of the Pinay Summit was palpable. I encourage everyone to take a look at this year’s program to see if there is an interest in attendance for years ahead. The event takes place within the Bay Area, travel should not be too far. With all that said I will leave you all with the Fly Pinays motto: “I GOT ME, YOU GOT YOU, WE GOT US.”