Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is a member of our Community Impact Committee. She is an educator, community organizer, small farmer, and mother. She is best known for her role as professor emeritus of Asian American Studies at UC Davis. While at Davis, she founded the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies.
Dr. Rodriguez left the professoriate to continue the Bulosan Center’s work through the nonprofit Amado Khaya Initiative (AKI), named after her late son, Amado Khaya Rodriguez, who died at 22 while serving indigenous communities in the Philippines. AKI continues Amado Khaya’s activist legacy with programs in alternative media, healing justice, power-building, indigenous solidarity and environmental justice along with Filipinx Studies. AKI operates out of the Amado Khaya Healing House, which serves as a refuge for BIPOC activists and artists. Dr. Rodriguez also established and works on the Remagination Farm, AKI’s sibling organization. Implementing an agroecological approach to food production, the farm is also a healing space and learning center.