Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez
ACTIVIST. FARMER. PROFESSOR. AUTHOR. MOTHER.
Robyn Rodriguez and her husband/partner Joshua Vang at the Remagination Farm in Kelseyville, CA.
Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is a teacher, organizer, scholar, writer, mother and farmer. She is best known for her role as professor emeritus and former chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis as well as founding director of the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies.
A prolific scholar, Dr. Rodriguez has published 7 books and nearly 50 academic articles and book chapters as well as journalistic pieces. A dynamic speaker, Dr. Rodriguez has addressed thousands of people internationally through keynote addresses and educational lectures from the world’s most prestigious universities to local grassroots organizations.
A committed community organizer, Dr. Rodriguez has helped to found or lead numerous organizations in the Filipino and Asian American community. Most recently, she supported the founding of the Asian American Liberation Network based in the Sacramento region, of which she serves as board chair. She is also the president of the Filipino American Educators Association of California.
A mother, Dr. Rodriguez has two sons, Amado Khaya and Ezio. Her eldest, Amado Khaya, passed at the age of 22 while serving indigenous communities in the Philippines. His passing, inspired their family to reconnect with the land and purchased a farm. Their youngest Ezio is in grade school and learning how to be a farmer on Remagination Farm, a property of Dr. Rodriguez and her husband, Joshua Vang. The farm represents Dr. Rodriguez's latest venture where she and her family are learning to implement permaculture techniques to raise animals and grow organic produce in a sustainable and regenerative manner. Dr. Rodriguez intends for the farm to serve as her new classroom where she will offer creatively bold, unconventional and deeply transformative learning experiences informed by racial justice movements; indigenous and land-based knowledge; the arts; radical love and healing to the entire community.
Dr. Rodriguez’s Motivational/Keynote Speeches and Consultations/Trainings draw from her scholarly expertise, community organizing and personal experiences. She brings rigorous research as well as tested practical experience along with honesty, vulnerability and humor to all of her presentations. She has addressed a large array of audiences from scholars and youth/student groups, to health care professionals and migrant workers, to nonprofits/community organizations, policy-makers, and lawyers, as well as the broader public at a range of venues across the globe.
Topics Include: racial equity, diversity and multiculturalism; BIPOC (Black Indigenous, People of Color), Women of Color, Asian American (including Filipino American) histories, struggles and activism; immigration; COVID-19; human rights; coalition building; empowerment and social justice advocacy; issues in higher education; work/life balance; grief and resilience
Dr. Rodriguez has addressed audiences in the following colleges/universities and community organizations as a motivational/keynote speaker and/or workshop trainer:
Educational Institutions (Partial list)
California Teachers Association
Hayward Unified School District
Vallejo Unified School District
New Haven Unified School District
Jefferson Unified School District (Daly City, CA)
Delano Union School District
Cornell University
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
University of Virginia
Oxford University (UK)
McGill University (Canada)
University of Sydney (Australia)
Hong Kong University (China)
Organizations (Partial list)
Google
Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies
People’s Collective for Justice and Liberation
California Domestic Workers Coalition
American Muslim Voice Peace Convention
Filipino Lawyers of Washington
International Migrants Alliance
Seeding Change: A Center for Asian American Movement Building
Centro Cultural de la Raza
Speaking Topics include…
GRIEVE, FARM, TRANSFORM
Dr. Rodriguez made a radical decision to leave her highly successful career as an academic to become a regenerative farmer during the pandemic in response to the cessation of “normal” life and the large-scale loss of life due to COVID-19.
ASIAN AMERICAN Histories, Issues and Activism
Dr. Rodriguez is one of the leading experts on the Asian American experience. Dr. Rodriguez provides an overview of some of the most urgent struggles facing Asian Americans ranging from anti-Asian hate to Asian American representation in the media to barriers to Asian American advancement in the workplace Though she draws on the latest, cutting-edge research in her talks, Dr. Rodriguez also shares her insights as a long-time social justice activist in the Asian American community and her personal experiences as an Asian American woman.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the WORKPLACE and Higher Education
As one of the first Filipinas to be admitted into her doctoral program and now, one of less than a handful of Filipinas to earn the rank of full professor at a major research university in the country, Dr. Rodriguez is all too familiar with underrepresentation in the workplace and higher education. A stalwart champion of diversity, equity and inclusion, Dr. Rodriguez has led several initiatives that have created new spaces of community, particularly for women of color. A devoted mentor to BIPOC and other underrepresented groups (LGBTQIA, first-generation, undocumented, etc.), she has been celebrated by her peers for her work. Dr. Rodriguez shares strategies for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
Filipinos in America
Dr. Rodriguez is peerless when it comes to the topic of Filipinos in America and the broader diaspora. She wrote an award-winning book about Filipino migration - which now serves as a core textbook on the topic in classrooms around the world - along with dozens of other publications. Most significantly she was the sole faculty member leading the charge in founding the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies in 2018, the first research and education center of its kind in the country. The Center not only housed a vast digital archive chronicling Filipino American history since the early 20th century, it also housed the most up-to-date survey data on Filipino American health and well-being in the country, launched the first peer-reviewed journal, . Dr. Rodriguez shares insights from her own publications, research from the Bulosan Center, and first-hand experiences to provide nuanced understandings of one of the oldest, largest and fastest-growing Asian American communities in the United States.
Ethnic Studies: The Interconnected Histories of Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC)
BIPOC communities’ rich contributions to our country continue to remain at the margins or in the footnotes of most American history textbooks. Dr. Rodriguez centers their untold stories highlighting the various ways BIPOC communities have come together through shared trials, tribulations and triumphs as racial minorities in the United States. Though BIPOC communities are incredibly diverse and have sometimes been pitted against each other, more often than not, Dr. Rodriguez highlights how they have been united in a common cause against the root causes of racial inequity.
“The way in which she balances her academic research teaching commitments, political activism, and personal interactions is probably among the best models I have seen among the many API scholars I have encountered throughout my years within academia.”
REcent Publications
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A minimum of 10% of Dr. Rodriguez’s booking fees will go toward any of the following non-profit organizations:
