I was born in Los Angeles and raised in the San Fernando Valley with my three siblings in a Catholic household. Like many other immigrant families, my parents immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in search of better opportunities. Unfortunately when I was 7, my parents got divorced and I was raised by my mother. She worked from morning until night as a registered nurse to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. She even beat cancer twice and to this day, she cares for her elder siblings and grandchildren. My upbringing in a working class neighborhood in an immigrant single-mother household would eventually shape most of my life to work just as hard as her and to care for others.
I graduated from Woodbury University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Accounting, and soon after, I received my Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license in the state of California working as an auditor for one of the big 4 accounting firms. I worked 60 hours a week auditing multi-million and billion-dollar private and public companies to ensure that their financial statements were in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). My audit experience taught me how to dig into the details, know where everything is, and ensure that every financial transaction had support behind it.
