I came to mentorship with Maio at a time when I was hungry for something deeper than advice - I wanted guidance that didn’t come with a script. What I found was someone who listens like the Earth listens - steadily, without rushing me to bloom… There was a sense of realness in our sessions. Nothing polished. Not entertainment. Just care - spacious, honest, and radically human.

I met Maio at a time when everything in me was unraveling - grief had shaken me and had cracked me open, and I was standing at the threshold of something new, but uncertain. I didn’t have a roadmap - just the quiet knowing that I couldn’t keep moving the same way. Meeting Maio felt like a soft landing in the middle of all that. Her presence - grounded, charismatic, real - reminded me it was okay to begin again.

She never asked me to shrink, perform, or pretend. Instead, she modeled what it looks like to be fully oneself in a world that asks us not to be. As an immigrant from the Philippines, she reflected parts of me back to myself that I had long neglected.

In her stories, her cadence, her unapologetic ways of being, I found threads of my own heritage I had forgotten to honor. She brought me back to my roots gently - not as a lesson, but as a remembering. There was something powerful about her Bay Area energy mixed with her Islander background - a rhythm I recognized. It felt like home in a way I hadn’t let myself feel in a long time.

The mentorship gave me the courage to make moves I’d been scared to make. In real time, I began to reimagine what “success” could mean on my terms, not capitalism’s. Through this mentorship I began to reinvent what healing could look like for me - as a lifelong ritual of staying true. True to my joy. True to my rage. True to my lineage, and my younger self/inner child that’s still hoping someone would say ‘you’re doing just fine.’

I’m learning to honor grief as my teacher, not a weight. To listen to my body. To make choices that align with my integrity - not just survival. This work gave me strength to shift out of spaces that no longer held me with care. I started making decisions that felt nourishing, not depleting. And most importantly, I started showing up for myself in the ways I always hoped others would.

I want more people to have the chance to experience what I did… If this mentorship gave me anything, it was the permission to return to myself with more compassion, more courage, and a deeper connection to where I come from with who I am truly destined to be.

“I recall the first time connecting with Maio was after the Atlanta, Georgia shooting of 6 Asian women. At the time, I was in very close proximity to anti-Asian hate crimes in my neighborhood and workplace, that this news hit very close as someone perceived as an Asian woman. It was after this news that Maio reached out to meet with me independently and check in on how I was processing everything. This small gesture let me know that this is someone I can trust and who cares about more than just my “academic success.”

Maio is someone that I know that whenever I am in a period of transition or struggling to make a decision, I can always call up and ask for advice. In my experience, Maio will rarely tell me what the right choice is, but rather share their own life experiences as a means for helping me understand what is best for me in this moment.

However, there are exceptions to that statement. A very tangible result from this mentorship was leaving a food service job. Post-grad, I began a barista role at a cafe that was not serving me and my growth. Prior to traveling to Asia for the summer, I had to decide whether I wanted to quit that position right before leaving or keep it and return after I returned from Asia. Out of a scarcity mindset, I was contemplating keeping the job so that when I returned, I had job security.

It was not until Maio very directly asked me why I would consider staying at that job, when it has treated me so poorly, that I really considered quitting.

Following my return from Asia, I had no job and was immediately thrusted back into a scarcity mindset, as I had no income. As a result, I accepted the first job that offered me a position at the YMCA. It quickly became evident that I could not stay there due to being in a hostile work environment. Thanks to mentorship from Maio, I was able to recognize that my decision was made out of a scarcity mindset and that if I am to live a healthy and full life, I cannot keep making decisions out of survival mode.

From that point on, when I was faced with a life altering decision, I would truly question whether I was making my choices out of a survival mindset. I intentionally chose to move back home with my mom so that I may break the survival cycle while I reground myself and sit with what direction I truly want to go in. I have since started a job working with immigrant and refugee communities that has supported so much growth in just the past four months and have also been offered a new job working with BIPOC high school Oakland youth.”

“Maio’s pedagogy is revolutionary. A Ratchedemic through and through, Maio dismantles the classroom hierarchies that traditional academia is deeply entrenched in. I saw parts of myself in them that I'd been taught to compartmentalize, that I'd been taught did not belong in academia. Through Maio’s teachings and the way they showed up, I too gained the confidence to show up as my authentic self in the classroom and beyond.

The format of our check-ins honored the understanding that both learning and leading extends far beyond the classroom. I always felt safe to show up exactly as I was, whether that was energized or teary-eyed. Maio always made space for the parts of me that needed to be seen and felt without judgement, while also speaking life into me and planting seeds that sprouted in their own time.

Maio’s teachings touch every corner of my life, and are at the core of the resilience and intentionality that inform how I navigate my relationships. These gifts instilled in me the discernment to identify what I need from myself and from others, and the confidence to set and hold boundaries that honor this. Post-grad, this has translated to standing firm in what I will and won’t accept from any employer. Doing so has landed me jobs in spaces that honor nothing less than, and has fueled my drive to build community and organize my workplace in ways that have allowed me and my coworkers to feel safer and more connected.”

“Some tangible results I can pull from this experience is the application of this understanding of intersectionality and positionality in the work that I do supporting communities through climate change and environmental justice work.

Working with Maio has changed my life for the better and I would call that divine alignment.”

“When I sought out mentorship, I didn’t quite know that that is what I was seeking, but I just knew that Maio’s teaching style- their honesty, conviction, and ways of challenging the class in a nurturing way- was something I had never experienced before in the classroom, something I felt drawn to.

I remember Maio’s statement of positionality to begin the class, coupled with their land and labor acknowledgment that felt much more real than the standard land acknowledgements I’d heard before typically presented as if to check off a box. In Maio’s class we investigated the performative nature of things like land acknowledgements, learned about radical love, and were forced to interrogate our own internal biases and privileges.

Maio began class with creating a shared playlist- an act that transformed our class beyond just pupils and teacher, but people who share love of music, art and therefore life- all qualities I find critical to those studying the topics which we engaged with. In class, we didn’t get “participation” points like most professors hand out, but “empower” points. Although a simple name change, I felt the love behind the dedication of the professor to encourage us that speaking up and participating is rewarding for our own selves as we speak our own truths, but also creates community amongst those around us.

After having learned about Intersectional theory through Maio’s class, I was prompted to use Intersectionality as a topic for my public speaking class. My public speaking professor was amazed by the content of the speech, so much that she asked me to give the speech at a Rhetoric department event for the University.

In my senior year, my final capstone project investigated the politics of love and how organizing movements can move beyond operating from a place of mere struggle. Although Maio was no longer teaching at USF, they provided me with a plethora of resources to aid in my research. I also drew heavily from my notes and projects in their class 3 years prior.

Although Maio and I met through the university, our relationship expands beyond the classroom and academia. I am grateful to call them a mentor and friend in all regards. It is powerful to see how the social justice teachings from the classroom can transform into lessons in my interpersonal life.

Maio’s teaching, both in the classroom, community, and one on one, blends music, art, humor, food, love, and brings life to us all.”