ANNALISA ENRILE is a Professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, turning classrooms into brave spaces to train the next generation of change makers.  She traces her roots back to the Philippines, where she became a human rights defender and anti-trafficking warrior.  She continues to work on both sides of the Pacific and across other oceans fighting to end modern day slavery.  Annalisa believes in the transformative power of stories, the strength of community and the promise of innovation and design.

MAITET LEDESMA is Philippine-born and has lived in Europe for the past 40 years. She is a community and political activist, a solidarity and development worker. She has been engaged with communities of migrants, women and children, refugees, and displaced peoples working on issues of migration and development, race relations, social emancipation and women’s liberation, development justice, human rights and peace. She is the board chairperson of IBON International-Europe, a service institution working with social movements and civil society constituencies on development issues and building consensus in global arenas and international processes. She is a member of the International Women’s Alliance, a global alliance of militant, grassroots-based women’s organizations and networks that advance national and social liberation and gender equality. 

MARY CAPARAS has been the anti-human trafficking program manager at Womankind in New York City since 2014. Mary works with community members, and continues to provide tailored trainings, outreach and advocacy on human trafficking. She approaches her work with a multi-dimensional lens and strives to honor the multiple truths that marginalized populations often hold. Mary earned her M.S.W. from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College with a concentration in Community Organizing, Planning and Development. Prior to joining Womankind, Mary spent 12 years learning academically and experientially while working within medical and legal fields both in New York City and in London.

ELIZA FABILLAR is an educator, researcher, facilitator, and nonprofit leader. She supports education practitioners and policymakers to address root causes of inequities and dismantle systemic barriers so that all students have opportunities to succeed, particularly in underserved communities. Eliza is also a teacher of movement, breath-work, meditation, and restorative yoga therapy.  Fifteen years ago, Eliza began studying and practicing yoga and it was a transformative experience. She was inspired by the mind-body-breath connection. Eliza has worked with women’s organizations around issues like sex trafficking and women’s empowerment. Recently, she co-facilitated Inside Out: Stories We Carry in Our Body and Breath, and continues to collaborate with friends to continue this work, creating spaces for women to effect change by sharing personal and collective narratives. Eliza was born in the Philippines, and grew up in New York City. She holds a Master’s degree in cultural anthropology and education from Columbia University in the City of New York.

ROSSA SOCCO and her child Tala make offerings to Iemanjá nightly. She is a practitioner of ancestral medicines with a doctorate in Traditional Chinese Medicine with a speciality of death, sexual violence, depleted women, mothers, organizers, pediatrics and PTSD. She was 11 years old in Honolulu when her father was one of the 20 lead plaintiffs of the landmark 1992 Human Rights Litigation against the Marcos estate for crimes of Martial Law. She co-founded Our Medicine Is Resistance, a women’s medicine sharing collective to be able to provide pro-bono in-person or distance medicine works, ceremony and herbalism for sexual assault and child sexual assault survivors.

Our Medicine Is Resistance: Our purpose is to make ancestral medicines accessible for sisters seeking a decolonial, anti-patriarchal safe space consecrated to Sagrada Femenina. We strive for wholeness and building a community that is allowed to call upon one another as an antidote to self-estrangement, movement estrangement, and land estrangement. We do this by reviving our grandmother’s medicine practices and sharing medicines whether that be a safe container that is survivor-centered, plant/ herbal medicines, song, ceremony, art, political education, one-on-one support or the practice of sanctuary. 

When writing, ERICA MIGUEL is interested in the stories of women, the natural environment, spirituality and more recently, the early history of women in the craft of bookbinding. She is honored to be part of such a talented group who share the same goal of unsilencing the experiences of mail-order brides from the the Philippines and all those in similar circumstances. Erica currently resides in Los Angeles, California (Gabrielino/Tongva land) with wolf descendant, Xochipilli, who doesn’t leave her side. Or vice-versa. www.ericamiguel.com

CAROLYN ANTONIO is a NY/NJ-based writer and non-profit worker. She has been in the publishing, arts and culture, and nonprofit fields for over two decades. She’s a proud member of a 20-year-old women’s writing group, was a founding committee member of FAM (Filipino American Museum), and is a member of Sari-Sari: Women of Color Arts Coup. She is collaborating with two other writers on the play, Export Quality: Monologues Drawn from True Stories of Mail-Order Brides from the Philippines. Carolyn has been involved in Filipino, broader Asian American, and BIPOC community organizing, along with a life-long focus on women’s, racial, economic and social justice issues. She believes in the power of words to inspire action, strives to be present, and is learning to (re)ground herself in nature.

US-based writer, community organizer, and Zen practitioner DOROTEA MENDOZA was born in the Philippines.  She mostly writes fiction, and loves the flash form.  At the center of all her work is her beloved homeland and her many kapwa Pilipino scattered around the globe.  Dorotea is drawn to community-driven, collaborative projects, which is what Export Quality: Monologues Drawn from True Stories of Mail-Order Brides from the Philippines is and has been from the start.  She’s grateful to the many women in GABRIELA Philippines, AF3IRM (formerly GABNet), and BABAE, with whom she organized and whose activism around sex trafficking and advocacy planted the seeds for Export Quality.  Dorotea hopes that the production will spark meaningful questions, conversations, and actions around violence against women.  If she isn’t writing, organizing, or in Zen practice, she’s tending to her 56 house plants in a small apartment in NYC (or watching Liverpool FC with her partner Matthew).  You can visit her at www.doroteamendoza.com.