Abigail is the first generation of her family born in the USA to Filipino parents. Her paternal grandfather survived the Bataan death march and, via creative use of the GI Bill, in one generation shifted from subsistence rice farming in the rural Philippines to a family of teachers, lawyers, accountants, and nurses on three continents. And one granddaughter (me) whose vocation in life defies her family’s abilities to encapsulate in one word. 

Based in Portland, Oregon, Abigail has lived and worked over the past twenty years in the Philippines, India, Senegal, Kenya, Italy, Peru and Ecuador, with organizations like the United Nations, the Wildlife Conservation Society, The Lemelson Foundation, the Government of Uruguay, Portland State University and IMPAQTO, a social enterprise accelerator in Ecuador. She loves working in partnership with diverse groups of people to learn, co-create and re-imagine together the systems we work in. This is often through supporting the conditions that allow for power-sharing in philanthropy, community-led philanthropy, mentoring and coaching nonprofit and for-profit social venture leaders, and facilitation of global community impact networks organizing for racial and climate justice, healing, and thriving people and planet. She has also worked as a professional cellist and gymnastics instructor. Abigail earned a M.Sc. in Environmental Science from Yale, hold a B.Sc. in International Politics from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, and a certificate in International Law from the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar in Senegal. 

She love languages, is fluent in English, Spanish and French, and knows enough to get into trouble in Portuguese, Italian, Tagalog, Ilocano (Philippine dialects) and Wolof (Sénégal). When not in front of a computer, she grows food in her garden, sings with her teenagers only slightly off-key, accompanied by various musical instruments cluttering up the family room, dances with her husband or finds ways to get outside.