Narni joined Pintig in the mid-1990s as an actor in the production “Sabi-Sabi.” She took her love of the performing arts, theater, and community with her when she moved to the east coast to pursue a career in media and technology. Narni’s background includes creative strategy, advertising, business development for Google, YouTube, AOL, Time Warner, and Simple Laboratories. Narni returned to her hometown of Chicago in 2006. She has served as President of the University of Chicago Alumni Club of Chicago, leading a board of 25 directors who represent a community of 50,000 constituents.
Riza D. Belen, one of the founding members of Pintig has been active in the social movement for 3 decades now. She was part of Gabriela Network, Chicago. She currently works with first-gen, low-income students to help them persist and graduate.
She has an MSW from Loyola.
Levi started his theater acting in the Philippines in the late 80’s during his student activism years. He believes that through theater arts a social transformation could be reached to a broader audience. He was one of the founding members of Pintig Cultural in 1991. He is a mental health counselor by profession.
RJ Silva is a writer and creative producer. Born and raised in Manila, he moved to America at 13 years old and has lived in Phoenix, Orlando, and Chicago. Starting with CIRCA Pintig in 2013 during his years at Loyola University Chicago, he graduated with a BA in Theatre and worked in the themed entertainment industry as a producer for Walt Disney Imagineering. Now back in Chicago, he is the producing associate for CIRCA Pintig, assisting in planning and productions, and has performed for CIRCA Pintig in ‘ALLOS: The Story of Carlos Bulosan’ and ‘Daryo’s All-American Diner.’ Outside of CIRCA Pintig, RJ is a co-founder and producer of The Ampliverse, a multimedia channel that celebrates pop culture without the toxicity of exclusivity through podcasts and writing. RJ is also a writer for the screen and stage. RJ-Silva.com
Greg Taruc is a long-time member of Circa-Pintig (CP). While volunteering at CP, he worked as an actor, stage manager, light and sound technician, production manager, a producer and eventually became the organization’s Executive Director in the fiscal year 1998-1999. He started his theater acting in the early ’80s and is an active honorary board member of Teatro Tomasino in the Philippines. Greg Taruc is a Doctor of Physical Therapy by profession.
An artist-filmmaker, educator, and archivist with a diverse practice that includes painting, performance, moving images, installation, and ritual. In 2023, she earned her Master of Fine Arts in Moving Image from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is currently pursuing an MA in Art History at the same university. She has showcased her work in Canada, Spain, the Philippines, and across the US. Ashley is also involved in community organizing, focusing on gender violence survivor advocacy and Philippine cultural production. She holds roles as a Co-Curator Partner of the Philippine Heritage Collection at the Field Museum of Natural History and as a member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). Additionally, she serves as the de facto archivist for the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago, collaborating with the Chicago Film Society and the University of Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project.
Known for her soulful and theatrical vocal style, Foline Roos has performed in various musical theatre productions and collaborated with talented jazz artists in Chicago. She played Lamia in Africa & Plumbridge, a musical that won the Best Songwriting award at the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival. In 2015, she collaborated with jazz saxophonist and arranger, Roy McGrath and released a demo that included two original songs she wrote entitled “Come What May” and “Friends.” In addition to performing arts work, Foline has spent over a decade working as a registered nurse. She takes pride in having cared for patients living in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods. She is a board member of Circa Pintig, a nonprofit organization that promotes education, culture, and advocacy for Filipino immigrants in the U.S. Foline recently wrote a musical play about the role of Filipino nurses in American society and is now working on the launch of its staged production, so stay tuned for updates. Check out Crossroad the Musical on Facebook, folineroos.com, and her YouTube channel, Foline Roos.
Anna Guevarra is a scholar, educator, and program builder. She is the Founding Director and Associate Professor in the Global Asian Studies Program at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is the author of Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers as well as numerous scholarly publications on labor, migration, care work, the Philippine diaspora, and critical race/ethnic and gender studies. Her current projects explore the impact of COVID-19 on Filipinx/a/o careworkers, the roboticization of care work labor, the Indian Ocean connection between the Philippines and India through colonial foodways, and a public history project tracing a people’s history of Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. Dr. Guevarra has co-directed prestigious grants from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright, and the Department of Education’s Asian American Native American Pacific Islander (AANAPISI) serving institutions initiative. She volunteers with organizations focusing on racial and economic justice and immigration rights. She is currently a Public Voices Fellow in the OpEd Project.
Rey is a founding member of Pintig. He was a student activist during the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in the 1980s. He migrated to the US in 1984 and became actively involved in community organizing as part of the Alliance for Philippines Concerns and the League of Filipino Students (LFS)-Chicago chapter. In 2016, he started a discussion group called “Balitaang Pilipinas” to talk about Philippine issues such as extra-judicial killings, human rights violations against farmers, indigenous communities, etc. Rey is happy to return to the CP board in 2018 after being gone for years raising a family.
Divine has been serving on the board for 3 terms and has been a long-time member since the early formation years of the Pintig Cultural Group. She has performed both off-stage and on-stage production work for 30 years. She works for Wintrust as a personal banker.
