PRESS RELEASE
SFPCG-PR-26-2021
Philippine Consulate in San Francisco Caps Women’s Month with Inspiring Stories from Fil-Ams in Silicon Valley
SAN FRANCISCO, 5 April 2021 – The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco celebrated this year’s International Women’s Day with a Facebook premiere of Filipino American women trailblazers in Silicon Valley on 26 March at 6 PM Pacific Time via its Facebook.com/PHinSF account.
The virtual event titled, “Fil-Am Women in Tech: A Conversation with Filipino-American Trailblazers in Technology,” featured the inspiring stories of Fil-Am women including philanthropist and nonprofit group PhilDev Trustee Ms. Maria Banatao, Netflix Director of Encoding Technologies Ms. Anne Aaron, Asana Head of Investor Relations Ms. Catherine Buan, Geo Data Ops Program Manager at Google Maps Ms. Alexandria Chu, and Filipino Americans in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) FASTER founder Ms. Erin Pangilinan. Filipino trailblazer and PhilDev Founder and Tallwood Venture Capital Founder and Managing Partner Mr. Dado Banatao also shared his perspectives on the matter. The virtual forum was moderated by Ms. Fatima Y. David, Global Philanthropy Chair for Asiapacforce at Salesforce.
“We are pleased to have our Filipino-American women trailblazers in technology to tell their stories and inspire more Filipino and Filipino-American girls and women to follow their dreams and become leaders themselves in the field of science, technology and related areas,” said Consul General Neil Frank Ferrer.
Ms. Aaron is a trailblazer who leads the team responsible for workflows, services and research related to media encoding and processing at Netflix. Her team enables the best picture and sound quality while watching Netflix. She echoed a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome.”
Ms. Buan, who is best known among technology investors for her streak of high-profile IPOs, including the recent IPOs of Asana, Lyft, Okta, and Docusign, among others, had to overcome hardships growing up in the United States. “One of my hopes for young Filipino women is that they, we, keep our sense of helpfulness, goodness in the heart — the connection of our heart to our head — and not see that as tradeoff for taking ownership and driving outcomes and taking on more responsibility,” she said.
Ms. Chu has established free after-school computer science programs across San Francisco Bay Area and become Filipino Googler Network’s (FGN) Global COO. “[I attribute my success to] my parents’ unwavering dedication to do whatever was necessary to get their goal, which was to provide for a better future for their daughters…and the cultural aspect of Bayanihan.”
For Ms. Pangilinan, her dream is that someday, young Filipino and Filipino American girls and young women would recognize the contributions of Filipino Americans in various fields, primarily in the technology industry.
Mr. and Mrs. Banatao also shared their take on gender equality in the technology sector. “Females work hard, better than the males…I have observed that whether you are an engineer from the Philippines or the U.S. or other countries, there’s a lot of equality right now. I think that the Valley is still a nice place to be in,” said Mr. Dado Banatao. He invented two of the foundation technologies still in every PC today: the PC chip set and the graphics acceleration architecture.
Asked about her hopes and dreams for young Filipino and Fil-Am girls and women, Ms. Banatao said, “I’m hoping that we continue to grow, we continue to have more role models that we have today. I think that will happen.” Watch the full video presentation, “Fil-Am Women in Tech: A Conversation with Filipino-American Trailblazers in Technology,” on Facebook.com/PHinSF./END
