She Talks Asia finds place ‘rich in stories’ in first Cebu summit

• The She Talks Asia Cebu Summit, held on August 22, aimed to share the rich stories of women from Cebu, featuring speakers who encouraged breaking societal norms and pursuing personal passions.
• Panelists included athletes and advocates like Mary Joy Tabal and Jonnette Alquizola, who shared their journeys of overcoming challenges and leading with emotion, emphasizing the importance of personal choices and community impact.
• The event concluded with a commitment to continue sharing women's stories and inspiring future generations, highlighting Cebu's wealth of narratives.

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A place rich in stories. This was how She Talks Asia (STA) co-founder Iza Calzado described Cebu as she opened the She Talks Asia Cebu Summit on Saturday, August 22. It’s also why the group chose the Queen City of the South for its first summit outside Metro Manila: the Cebuanas’ stories deserved to be shared.

As early as 9 am, women from all walks of life stepped into the SM Seaside Cebu Skyhall. They arrived eager and open, ready for a day of overflowing stories rooted in solace, struggle, and triumph. Here are some of them.

Redefining the game

“Buang” (crazy) is a word that surprisingly gets brought up a lot early in the morning, care of content creator Nina Olalo who brands herself as a “buang baddie.” 

It’s a word that has derogatory roots, but Olalo beamed every time she said it, and the crowd cheered at each utterance. She wishes to reclaim that word for this generation of Cebuanas — to be buang, for her, means to go against the norm. Surprise everyone with what they don’t expect from a woman. 

It’s a notion that the two athletes on the panel “Living Beyond Limits” echoed, but without the expletive. 

Mary Joy Tabal, the first female Filipino marathon Olympian, told the women of Cebu to “run at your own pace in spite of what the world expects you to be.” She hails from the mountain province of Guba, and although her career is built on speed, it was a slow jog of passion and determination that led her to compete in the Southeast Asian Games, the Tokyo Marathon, and eventually the Olympics.

Even if she has to collapse to get there, Tabal says what keeps her going is the finish line. “No matter how many cramps, periods, upset stomachs — I always make sure I reach the finish line,” she expressed, encouraging young women to do the same. 

In the similarly male-dominated field of krump, street dancer Sam Rivera, known as “Nemesis,” stomped her way to the top 16 of the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final in Los Angeles last October 2025.

Before that, she was a human resources graduate who traded her degree for a career in dance. “We were made to think that the road to success is one way. We are afraid to go out of that path. But I realized I could,” Rivera said.

That choice, however, didn’t come without its skeptics, particularly her own family and friends. “It was hard because people will doubt you [because] they’re concerned,” she admitted. “But there is no right decision. It’s up to us to make [our choice the] right decision.”

Transgender educator and public speaker Alem Garcia said we should be judging people based on these right decisions, not their genders. “At the end of the day, we should measure others by unsa iya idalit sa lamesa (what they bring to the table),” she said. “Because they can never dismiss your body of work.”

She claims this eye for excellence should follow us into politics, which is also a male-dominated field. “If we elect people that are excellent in what they do, do you think a community will fail?” she asked. 

Leading with emotion

On the left side of the room during the “Leading From Who We Are” breakout session, a row of girls held pink placards with the words, “She’s beauty. She’s brains. She’s Jonnette.”

The face on the cards was that of Jonnette Alquizola, founder of the non-profit organization Children of the Coast Foundation, who lightheartedly clarified that she didn’t force them to bring these signs.

Alquizola is a cancer survivor, specifically Ewing sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. She was only 22 years old when she found this out, and the grueling process to fight it led her to a life of advocacy, particularly for the health and nutrition of children in indigent Cebuano communities.

She started with six children in the coastal town of Badian, far from the city. In 2017, that number rose to almost 8,000 all across the province.

“We have to shift from the status quo na one time bigay, and that’s it,” Alquizola said. “If you really understand what it takes to make a difference, it’s not easy.”

She also doubles as the chairman of Miss Mandaue, one of Cebu’s oldest pageant organizations. At first, she couldn’t understand what in her story of cancer and health advocacy screamed “beauty queen.” But she credits her role as a female leader as what ultimately brought her there.

“Leading with emotion is my greatest power,” Alquizola said Growing up, she only ever knew masculine archetypes of leadership — transactional and devoid of emotion. But what the pageant scene in Mandaue needed was not someone who would treat these young Cebuanas commercially. What they needed was a safe and supportive environment to pursue their dreams.

At those words, the girls in the front row raised their placards, all of them young women she had taken under her wing in Miss Mandaue.

Reclaiming the narrative

STA co-founder Lynn Pinugu got emotional as she went on stage to introduce one of the final speakers. The STA founders discovered her story online a few years ago and took her under their tutelage.

Larra Lasam, one of the youngest speakers at 24, is a content creator, inspirational speaker, model, empowerment advocate, track athlete, and the summit’s community lead.

She is also a burn survivor. Her body tells that story before she can even whisper a word. 

In her presentation, Lasam talked about the fire that caused her scars and her 14-year struggle to outrun it. She wore face masks long before the pandemic. No matter the humidity, her arms were always covered in long sleeves. When people fixated on her hair to avoid looking at her skin, she chopped it to her ears. She joined the track team, mustering all her energy to be identified as anything other than a “burn survivor.”

But no matter how far she ran away, the conversation always circled back to her skin and that catastrophic fire. Her past always remained one step ahead, faster. 

Until she decided to stop running, especially when she heard from the many young women all over the country that saw her as their inspiration. 

“I have everything I need to live a bountiful life,” she declared as her speech came to a close. “If this is all that I am and all that I’ll ever be, I’ll be the best at it.”

The first She Talks Asia Cebu Summit concluded with a promise: this will not be the last. There are more truths to tell, more women to inspire.

They could try to exhaust all the wonderful narratives this province has to offer, but Cebu is a place rich in stories. We will always have more to share.– Rappler.com