In our ongoing commitment to mentoring and giving back to our student and alumni communities, UCLA Pilipino Alumni Association (PAA) invites you to join us in our second installment of our mentoring series “Your
Career Path Journey.”

As students, have you ever wondered what to study at UCLA, how to leverage your UCLA student experiences in the direction of your future goals, or how to break into a profession? Now's your chance to hear from alumni who have forged their own path.

As alumni, re-acquaint yourself with old friends or come and meet our inspiring panelists. We have a new panel of speakers and the format has changed to accommodate more interactive exchanges between the audience and panelists.

Please join us for an informative, inspiring and enlightening evening.

Meet Three of Our Panelists

Dani de Jesus '00
Dani de Jesus (she/her), CNN Original Series + Film Independent Docuseries Fellow, is an award-winning educator, facilitator, and filmmaker from Los Angeles, CA. As the director of development at Craig Anderson Productions, she helped bring movies (On Golden Pond, Meltdown, For the Love of a Child, The Christmas Blessing) and series to the small screen. She then became a social studies high school teacher in Maui and was a National Education Association/Teach Plus Fellow and was named the 2011 Hawai’i Economics Teacher of the Year.

After returning back to Los Angeles and film/tv, Dani has focused on telling stories that elevate and engage, highlighting underrepresented communities. She’s currently in pre-production on The Cassandra Project, a trilogy of short films about the consequences of women not being heard. She is also a co-producer on the upcoming feature film East of Western featuring Dante Basco. Dani has produced the short films A Cohort of Guests starring Sarah Drew, Adult Night with Kevin Alejandro and Lesley Ann-Brandt, the award-winning A Woman Reported with Moira Kelly, and various music videos, including the recent Asian American Pacific Islander anthem Gold by Ella Jay Basco, featuring Ruby Ibarra.

Currently, Dani is a producing partner of Alejandro Films, serves as Chair of the Historic Filipinotown Coalition, and recently was named the 2022 UCLA Graduate Mentor of the Year.

Antoinette Molina '95
Antoinette Molina is a Senior Director of Development for UCLA’s Office of Regional Giving. Her region includes San Diego, Texas, the mid-states and Hawaii. As a major gifts officer, she has raised over 20 million dollars at UCLA to support scholarships, student programming and faculty research. She is passionate about philanthropy and the impact it has on meeting student needs and driving innovation. In addition to her fundraising role, she also serves as an Adjunct Faculty member at Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista where she teaches a course on Grant Research and Writing. Her previous experience includes coordinating a service-learning program at Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service and a Lecturer appointment at Stanford’s Program in Urban Studies. She has a B.A. from UCLA in Political Science with a specialization in Asian American Studies and a Master’s in Public Policy from Georgetown University. She enjoys spending time with her husband, four kids and all her fur babies.

Gennie David Samala, M.S.W. '17
Gennie David Samala (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker from Special Services for Groups SILVER — a Los Angeles County contracted provider of older adult mental health services. Samala earned her bachelor's degree in social work from California State University, Los Angeles in 2014 and furthered her education by obtaining her master's degree in social welfare specializing in geriatric care from UCLA in 2017 as a GSWEC stipend recipient and William Randolph Hearst Fellow.

She continues to focus her work on breaking down stigma surrounding mental health and the growing needs of older adults, especially in the Filipino community, by providing culturally and linguistically sensitive individual psychotherapy and case management services in English and Tagalog (Filipino). She advocates for the health and mental health needs of Filipino-Americans by serving as one of the co-facilitators of Mag Usap Monday, a monthly virtual psychoeducational series and a grief and loss support group hosted by Search to Involve Pilipino Americans. She is part of the planning committee for the Filipino Mental Health Wellbeing Summit, has spoken as a panelist for AAPI centered conferences for organizations such as the American Psychological Associaltion - Division on Filipinx Americans, and serves as one of the co-chairs for Historic Filipinotown Coalition's Health & Human Services Committee.