Dr. Angelica Cortez, community activist, social entrepreneur, and founder and executive director of LEAD Filipino, brings almost two decades of experience in public policy, advocacy, and community development work to the nonprofit. The organization is dedicated to grassroots leadership, culturally responsive education, health equity, and civic literacy in the FilAm community. LEAD stands for Leadership, Education, Activism and Dialogue.
While working with the California Immigrant Policy Center and State Assemblymember Rich Gordon, Cortez focused on health and human services issues statewide. She fought for state legislation on corporate board diversity while serving as vice president of Racial Justice and Equity for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Cortez is the first senior vice president of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for Pacific Clinics, a mental and behavioral health service provider. She also advocates for LGBTQ+ leadership, health equity, social justice, and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) political engagement.
“I’m a product of my people and will spend my days working toward community advancement,” she said.
Cortez grew up in an immigrant, working class community in Pittsburg, an East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her father spent his early years in the Philippines and immigrated to San Francisco with his family to the United States. Her mother came from a blended family of Guamanian, Japanese, Filipino, Dutch, and Irish heritage. Cortez was raised with rich Filipino and Guamanian customs and traditions emblematic of her culture, including strong family values around service, unity, and collective stewardship.
“I’m very driven by my cultural heritage, my identity, social groups, and causes but also the intersections of being a member of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said, adding in second grade she had a crush on a girl. “I had this attraction but didn’t really understand what it meant.”
Cortez kept her feelings to herself, as they were at odds with her religious Catholic upbringing. Her family attended church on Sundays, where Cortez sang in the choir and read the mass to the congregation. She and her sisters also helped their mother, a Eucharistic minister, bring communion to the sick and homebound.
Although her sisters teased her for being the family’s golden child, lacking gay role models, Cortez felt confused and alone.
“I knew it wasn’t right in the eyes of a devout Catholic family,” she said. “I hid who I was for a long time. I didn’t come out until I was 25.”
In college, Cortez realized she had overcompensated during high school. She was a high achiever academically and athletically and involved with extracurricular activities.
Joining in student activism and a Filipino American student organization Akbayan, at San Jose State University brought her a sense of connection and cultural pride. But through the years, she faced stereotyping.
“I have a million stories of people making lazy assumptions about my sexuality and my husband and my kids at home,” she said. “When they look at me, they see an Asian woman. Because of that, folks would ask me if my favorite Disney princess was Mulan? I’d say that’s a different Asian. I’m Filipina.”
People would also ask if she was into Hello Kitty. “I didn’t mean any disrespect to Hello Kitty,” Cortez laughed, “but just because I’m Asian doesn’t mean I have an affinity for Hello Kitty.”
While at SJSU, having studied political science, grassroots movements, power building, and civil rights strategies, Cortez became aware of social injustice and the importance of public service and representation. As Community and Political Affairs Chair of a Filipino American organization, she helped bring over 200 Eastside Union High School District students to SJSU to attend workshops on college applications and financial aid.
“For a lot of these kids, they were the first in their family to go to college,” she said. “Being able to make a small imprint in their trajectory filled my heart. A lot of them went on to pursue their own journeys in advocacy, activism, civil rights work, running campaigns, working as legislative staffers, and working in the public sector. It’s gratifying to know that I had a piece in that.”
About 16 years later, Cortez was among many community leaders to help launch Delano Manongs Park in East San Jose, the first park in San Jose and among one of the few in the country named in honor of the Manongs, the Filipino American labor leaders that fought for farmworker rights and protections throughout the 1960s.
Although she was initially slow to reveal to friends that she was queer, starting a romantic relationship emboldened her. Being young and in love with a woman at college helped her live her truth, she said, and find the courage to fully come out to herself.
“For me, it was standing in the mirror and saying to myself, ‘You love women. You are lesbian.’ And being okay with that and smiling back at myself,” she said, “and walking with my head held high.”
She was determined to live fully and openly, sharing who she was, regardless of the consequences.
“If my people rock with me and love me, then they’ll walk toward me,” she told herself. “And those that don’t will walk away.”
Today, when working with young students, she urges them to come out to themselves first. Through LEAD Filipino, she partners with other queer organizers to create emotionally and psychologically safe spaces. They provide culturally responsive programs that share stories and celebrate queerness in FilAm and AAPI communities.
Cortez said she was privileged to have her family’s love and support when she came out and appreciates being able to be her true self. She and a close cousin both came out to each other’s surprise and delight.
Cortez was motivated to create LEAD Filipino around issues impacting the Filipino American community, such as system gaps, economic hardship, food insecurity, cultural education, housing, and social justice.
Her career took off after finishing an internship at City Hall and joining the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits, where CEO Patricia Gardner became her mentor as well as a second mom.
Through participating in the Filipino Memorial Project from 2008 to 2012, she learned lessons in advocacy, fundraising and building neighborhood buy-in while working to have a mural commissioned at the Milpitas Library depicting the Delano Manongs. The project included outreach to student organizations, letter writing, and testifying at city commission meetings.
Cortez also worked as a legislative staffer with state Assembly member Rich Gordon, who was openly gay and chair of the LGBTQ caucus. She helped staff his portfolio on Health and Human Services and oversaw the internship program in the district office. A bill to include LGBTQ+ history in school books was passed but not yet implemented, she said.
These early professional experiences would influence her decision to one day start her own community organization.
Not seeing a FilAm voice among lobbyists advocating for policy and civic issues, along with attending the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute APALI), crystallized her desire for coalition building.
Cortez wanted to start an organization to increase FilAm civic literacy and civic representation. In 2015, the organization offered a workshop with the Filipino Youth Coalition in East San Jose. In 2016, LEAD Filipino took off, receiving its first grant to motivate Filipinos in Santa Clara County to vote. The first campaign was called Iboto Pilipino (Vote Filipino).
Leading by example and through open discussion, LEAD Filipino’s leaders help youth come out to their families while providing resources and support. The organization partners with service providers like Santa Clara County’s Q Corner, providing services and education on how to have constructive conversations safely, such as bringing a family member along and talking in a place of comfort.
LEAD Filipino plans to acquire a community center where youth, student, and senior organizations can lead Filipino civic programs, arts, and cultural groups and serve the broader community.
In addition to its transformational programming, Cortez would like to see the organization work toward social justice and the defense of LGBTQ+ communities. She’d like LEAD Filipino to dedicate its resources and advocate for the creation of an LGBTQ+ California policy commission focused on social safety nets that is being spearheaded by South Bay/Silicon Valley Assembly member Alex Lee.
Cortez has dedicated her life around justice, equity, and systems that don’t just reflect FilAm values and experiences, but strengthens how FilAm, AAPI, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ communities interact with systems of power to create the change they want to see. Her contributions are visible across civics and organizing, social impact, and health equity.
“The answer is not to shrink away and think someone else will do it,” she said, “because you’re the person we need to do it. We need to hear what you have to say. We need that diversity of perspective, opinion and experiences. This is the time to lead in your own way, to stick to your convictions and know that you’re not ever alone in this.”
