California, USA — It’s quite common to hear of a husband-and-wife team of Filipino-born professionals making it big in the USA. Enduring love and the nature of resiliency can bring Fil-Am couples to the summit of their ambition. It’s a narrative arc materializing now and then.
What makes a particular duo extra special, though, is the positive mindset they promote in their family, in the workplace, and their social circle.
For Alan and Amabel De Leon, the first letter of their first names has, well, nothing to do with their success in the West. They were, pure and simple, raised and molded to bring their A-game wherever they go.
“We hate to waste people’s time. So we want to make sure that every day, everything counts when you are in our environment. We want to reach out to people and empower them to find what they are looking for,” expressed Amabel, nurse-entrepreneur and inspirational author.
She and her husband Alan, a clinician and transformational leader, have consolidated hundreds of passionate professionals in their efforts to contribute more and more to the ever-growing healthcare industry, which they have been serving for decades.
Their romance and work ethic are a stamp on the immigrant fairytale, as together they built well-run companies and spearheaded the marketing of useful products.
Alan pointed out, “We learned from our supervisors and from people who are experts in something. By that way, we open ourselves to new opportunities. It’s the same thing we do for our employees. We allow them to grow because every receptionist can be a manager.”
Alan and Amabel are a reflection of what the American Dream is about, if only for their initiative to pull people—regardless of their calling—into their kind of thinking, which I likewise benefited from and which I find invigorating.
While in a meeting with them in their office in Ontario, a highly urbanized city in the heart of Southern California’s Inland Empire, I was briefly introduced to the essence of their firehouse brand of leadership. Amabel related, “What we enjoy the most is seeing people become successful, when they get to do what they love to do.”
She’s referring to people who have learned a lot from the time they became part of their team—those they assured “not to worry about their entry point,” and to “learn where you are.” It is their way of saying that the more skills one learns, the closer they get to becoming well-rounded.
Alan credits their ability to transform and do things out of the box to innovation and teamwork. He shared, “You allow yourself to transform, grow, and absorb as much as you can. We started as clinicians and ended up doing things outside of our scope and skills.”
Two years ago, I met the couple by chance while I was visiting Paco Arespacochaga of Introvoys fame at the latter’s home in Los Angeles County. That same day, Paco interviewed Amabel for his podcast Paco’s Place, and on her way out, I got to say hello.
I had started writing about successful Fil-Ams by that time, so it was easy to be drawn to them after finding out that Amabel authored a book about her life experiences called Bloom on the Battlefield, and that she and Alan significantly help each other in managing Vanura Home Health Services, Denu Consulting Group, among others. These are companies that consistently deliver excellence and cultivate highly efficient manpower.
On being unafraid to go out of comfort zones, Amabel argued, “You’ll never know what you want to do until you touch it. Before, I was scared of talking to people, and I thought I couldn’t do sales. You’d be in a position where you have to market and realize you actually like doing that.”
In her book, she mentioned being “homeless but not hopeless.” That phrase alone reflects the tough inner core from which she is built. When she launched the project, she told people that “winning is a choice,” and that she hopes readers of her part-memoir, part-self-help initiative will find concepts they’ve been waiting to hear.
“Hopefully, we can keep winning battles and we find our purpose and place,” she said.
Back in 1995, Amabel was a faceless immigrant from Southern Philippines—just another Filipino-bred nurse out to carve her future in what is hailed as the land of opportunities. Three decades later, she had become host of a podcast called The Whole Story, where she explores life and health in general through meaningful conversations with guests from various fields, including caregivers, entertainers, and community leaders. She had come a long way from literally taking shelter inside a car to being the mouthpiece of multiple companies.
In the very first episode, she asked Paco, who helped her put the podcast up, how he manages to welcome even strangers and treat them the same as he embraces friends. In another episode, she commended a person she employs for always saying yes to challenges and overcoming them.
Alan, a first-rate hand therapist who arrived in the US on the Fourth of July in 1991, is, for valuable reasons, the perfect partner for Amabel. He is a soft-spoken positivist who speaks his mind calmly and clearly. He is a workaholic in a very positive way, and he has the proof, having worked six days a week for two hospitals in the Philippines, partly to give back to the State University, being himself an alumnus of UP. That dedication to work was no doubt a consideration when he was later hired by Americans, a development that took him to LAX to shine in America.
It’s a no-brainer that his qualities as a person are aligned with those of Amabel, and destiny knew they had to meet. The soulmates have been gifted with a triple A of boys likely to carry on their kind of motivational leadership: Alec, Aaron, and Andre.
“Building leadership is allowing people to bloom and follow our lead. We have to find new blood to follow through the mission,” said Alan, whose father-figure stance is felt not just at home but in the offices and teams working under their guidance.
Simply put, living the American Dream is not rocket science for two former straight-A students with clear paths to glory and strong faith and love in and for each other.
