New Course Teaches Entrepreneurs How to Market to Filipinos…Without the Colonial Playbook
Filipino Americans are often lumped into generic “Asian” categories in business and advertising, flattening their stories, erasing their history, and ignoring the deeper forces that shape what they buy, trust, and build.
A new 6-week live course, Mastering the Filipino American Market, launching this September, is challenging that erasure head-on.
Co-led by Dr. Robyn Rodriguez, an internationally recognized leading scholar of Filipino Studies and founder of the School for Liberating Education, and Leo Albea, the founder of One Down and one of the most viral Filipino marketers online, this course is the first of its kind to fuse cultural history with business growth strategy. Together, they blend rigorous academic insight with proven digital campaigns that have reached over 3 billion organic views.
“Most Filipinos aren’t raised in an entrepreneurial environment; I definitely wasn’t,” says Albea. “This course takes the trial and error of brute forcing One Down and contextualizes it with decades of leading Filipino Studies academia to challenge the way we’ve been taught to build a business.”
Each week, entrepreneurs will explore a different lens of the Filipino experience and how it deeply impacts the buying decisions of the overall Filipino American market. It all builds up to a final module that pulls back the curtain on how U.S. colonialism still shapes the way we do business.
What does it mean to abandon the colonial playbook?
It means recognizing that Filipino entrepreneurs were never meant to win in systems that weren’t built for them.
“To understand Filipino American history is to understand Philippine-American history—and the unequal power relations that define it,” says Dr. Rodriguez. “Colonialism created structures and institutions—a playbook–that is stacked against us and constrains our growth.”
In the course’s final module, students will learn how Manifest Destiny, the U.S. restructuring of the Philippine economy, and ongoing colonial mentality continue to shape Filipino consumer trust and entrepreneurial behavior. It’s why American brands dominate even in Filipino spaces and why Filipino-made products are often undervalued, even by our own communities.
“We can’t escape these systems,” Rodriguez adds. “But we can create guardrails that serve our community and don’t reproduce the colonial playbook.”
Schedule: 6 Weeks of live Zoom sessions, starting September 24 (1.5 hrs/week)
Instructors:
• Dr. Robyn Rodriguez – globally recognized scholar for her leadership role in Filipino Studies and founder of the School for Liberating Education
• Leo Albea – Filipino media executive and CEO of One Down, known for producing the most viral Facebook video in the world in 2020 for the Home & DIY category
Curriculum Includes:
Why You’re Not Reaching More Filipinos
Find Your Real Filipino Customer
Start Local, Scale Smart
What Filipinos Actually Believe About Brands
The Filipino Framework That Converts to a Sale
Turn your Filipino Campaign into a Movement
Each week, participants will work on a high-impact project that sharpens a core part of their business—from funnel fixes to messaging pivots to customer segmentation. You’ll also join a private Slack space to share wins, ask questions, and learn alongside other Filipino founders scaling with purpose.
Why It’s Urgent:
Q4 is the most important sales season of the year, coinciding with Filipino American History Month, Black Friday, and the holidays. But this course goes deeper than revenue.
As DEI and Ethnic Studies programs are being slashed across the country, this course offers something more radical: a Filipino-led alternative to business-as-usual.
Who It’s For:
• Filipino entrepreneurs and brand founders
• Marketers trying to grow within the Filipino American market
• Creative leads, agency folks, and e-commerce owners
• Anyone building something for, by, or with the Filipino community
Only 30 students will be accepted. Applications open on August 14.
Learn more and join the waitlist at buildfilipino.com/course
