A panel of mental health professionals and a Filipino undergraduate student from the Harvard Philippine Forum will address how they are breaking the mental health stigma in the Filipino community and the wider community by sharing stories from their mental health careers and mental health advocacy work. Our goal is to inspire other Filipinos to help break the mental health stigma in their communities.

Watch it on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE47pWUlrzY

This panel is scheduled for:

Day 2:  Nov. 5,  7:30-9:00 p.m. ET  (Nov. 6,  7:30-9:00 a.m. Philippines)

Michelle Lopez Clark is a psychotherapist based in California and fluent in the Filipino language. She is passionate about helping people through life transitions, relationship difficulties, and multicultural issues. Michelle is also the author of “With You,” a children’s book that promotes diversity and the value of emotional connection.

Roanne de Guia-Samuels

Anjeli Macaranas is a second-year premedical student at Harvard College studying Neuroscience and Global Health. She currently serves as the Education Director of the Harvard Philippine Forum and works to stimulate conversation surrounding mental health advocacy among Filipino youth. In 2018, she founded the Little Virtuosos Project, an international student initiative dedicated to spreading awareness about the impact of music therapy on mental health and wellbeing.

As a reporter for The Harvard Crimson, Anjeli has collaborated with several experts at the Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health and has written multiple articles regarding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on population mental health, particularly among minority groups. Additionally, she works as an undergraduate research assistant at the Developmental Risk and Cultural Resilience Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she studies the association between Covid-19 related racial discrimination and mental health outcomes among Asian-American college students.

Anjeli is thrilled to be a part of FYLPROCon’s Mental Health Panel, as she has a strong passion for reducing cultural stigma around mental health within the Filipino  population and the AAPI community as a whole.

Andrea Cabrera Jakucs, LCSW 97252 is a Filipino-American licensed clinical social worker who is passionate about wellness and deeply cares about providing the highest quality of mental health services for her clients. She received her Master in Social Work from the University of Southern California and currently serves as the co-chair of the health and human services committee of Historic Filipinotown Coalition. Today she provides individual psychotherapy to adults in English/Tagalog, presents at conferences to discuss her work in the mental health field, conducts wellness workshops for organizations, and provides business consultations at Wellness with Andrea Jakucs & Associates located in Altadena, California. Her work has been featured in news outlets such as Fox 11 Los Angeles, NBC News, Canada’s Omni News, and Balitang America. In her spare time, she enjoys biking along the beach, snowboarding, and watching musicals. For more information, you can go to her website at www.wellnesswithandreajakucs.com or follow her on Instagram at wellnesswithandreaj.

Panel Lead and Moderator:

Frances Maher is a biotechnology professional working as a Research Associate in cancer drug development in the DC/Maryland area. She graduated from Brandeis University with a B.S. in Biology and is passionate about cancer research and business.