Eight Filipinos were included in the Forbes "30 Under 30 Asia," joining this year's list of the region's top young entrepreneurs and change-makers, the magazine revealed Tuesday.
Making the list were musician Guendoline Rome Viray Gomez "No Rome", 23 years old; Carmina Bayombong, 27, cofounder of Invested Philippines; Edward Christopher Dee, 28, a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and Rexy Josh Dorado, 28, cofounder of social media app Kumu.
Also making it were Angela and Aurelien Chen, both 29 and cofounders of Eskwelabs; Ryan Gersava, 27, founder of Virtualahan; and photographer Gab Mejia, 24.
The list includes 30 honorees for every category — Arts; Consumer Technology; Enterprise Technology; Entertainment and Sports; Finance & Venture Capital; Healthcare & Science; Industry; Manufacturing & Energy; Media, Marketing & Advertising; Retail & E-Commerce; Social Entrepreneurs.
"After the toughest year in their generation, these 300 Millennials and Gen-Zs have persevered to survive and even thrive despite long lockdowns, restricted travel and uncertainties on all fronts," said Rana Wehbe Watson, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Editor.
According to Forbes, there were over 2,500 online nominations vetted by a lineup of judges and industry experts.
This year's judges include Rakuten CEO Mickey Mikitani; HCL Corporation Executive Director & CEO, and Shiv Nadar Foundation Trustee Roshni Nadar Malhotra; INCE Capital General Partner JP Gan; Sinovation Ventures CEO Kaifu Lee; RB Capital Group Founder and CEO Kishin RK; Qiming Venture Partners Managing Partner Nisa Leung; BandLab Technologies CEO Kuok Meng Ru; GaryPepperGirl Founder Nicole Warne; The Coffee Academics Founder and Chairwoman Jennifer Wai-Fun Liu; ZhenFund CEO Anna Fang; and Catcha Croup CoFounder and Group CEO Patrick Grove.
At Coachella 2019, Gomez, whose stage name is No Rome, performed with English pop rock band The 1975, making him the first Filipino artist to play at the influential music festival.
Gomez' Coachella debut came on the back of his hit single "Narcissist," featuring The 1975, which racked up more than 12 million YouTube views in the past two years. Gomez teased on his Twitter account in February about collaborating on a song with The 1975 and singer-songwriter Charli XCX.
Bayombong cofounded InvestED in 2016 to provide educational loans to students. The startup has its own credit rating and risk-control algorithm for lending to financially disadvantaged youth in the Philippines.
Bayombong's work has won her multiple awards including The Philippines Outstanding Women in Nation's Service, Cartier Women's Initiative Laureate for Southeast Asia and Dubai World Expo's Top 120 Global Innovators.
At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dee studies how to deliver better care to disadvantaged populations in the United States and the Philippines.
Last year, Dee served on the Philippines' Covid-19 task force, which used social media to combat fake news about the virus. He will graduate this year from Harvard Medical School.
Kumu, which Dorado started is one of the top-grossing social media apps in the Philippines, according to research firm SensorTower. Founded in 2018, more than 6 million registered users flock to the social platform to live stream themselves doing anything – singing, playing games or just talking – or watch others' live streams.
Most of Kumu's revenues come from virtual gifts, but the startup has plans to launch new features, including an AI-powered live commerce platform where viewers can buy products that influencers promote on live streams.
So far, Kumu raised more than $8 million, including $5 million in March 2020 led by Singapore-based Openspace Ventures.
Eskwelabs is an edtech startup based in Manila that provides online courses on data science and analytics to help people in underserved communities in the Philippines, such as stay-at-home moms and young people without university degrees, find better work in the digital age.
Since its launch in 2019, Eskwelabs taught more than 3,000 people, about 90% of whom found better-paying work within 90 days of completing its course.
In January, the startup joined EduSpaze, a Singapore-based edtech-focused accelerator program. Eskwelabs was one of the two winning startups of the "Building the Digital Skills of Employees" category at the Asian Development Bank's Digital Week 2019 hackathon.
Gersava founded Virtualahan to break down employment barriers for stigmatized people, including those with disabilities and recovering drug addicts, by providing digital-focused job-skills training for roles that can be done remotely.
Gersava was inspired to start Virtualahan after he was denied a job because he has hepatitis B and faced discrimination.
Since its launch in 2015, the nonprofit has trained more than 600 people, 78% of whom found employment in digital-related jobs, such as digital design, social media marketing and video editing. Gersava was a finalist for the 2020 Cisco Youth Leadership Award.
Lensman Mejia's work, which also includes art and articles, focuses on raising awareness about the environment, particularly the wetlands, endangered wildlife and indigenous communities.
His work has been featured on National Geographic, United Nations Development Programme and World Wide Fund for Nature.
In 2019, he was awarded a filmmaking fellowship by the Jackson Wild Media Lab, which hosts the nature filmmaking equivalent of the Oscars.
Mejia is also a cofounder of Youth Engaged in Wetlands, a youth network across 30 countries launched in 2018 focused on the conservation of wetlands and migratory birds.