Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is an educator, writer, community organizer, mother and regenerative farmer. After reaching the highest rank of the university professoriate as full professor, serving as department chair, and founding the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, Rodriguez made a dramatic decision to return to the land. Along with her husband, Joshua Vang, she established Remagination Farm, a freedom farm that also serves as Rodriguez’s land-based classroom where she offers transformative learning experiences grounded in social justice movements, indigenous knowledge, the arts, and radical love.
A prolific writer, Rodriguez has published seven academic books, 50+ scholarly articles, book chapters as well as journalistic pieces, and is completing a memoir on her farm journey. All of her publications highlight the causes she’s committed to including global anti-imperialist struggles, justice for migrant workers, indigenous peoples movements and more.
Indeed, as a community organizer, Rodriguez has helped found or lead numerous groups advancing justice at the local, state-wide, national and international levels. Rodriguez has two sons, Amado Khaya and Zee. Her eldest, Amado Khaya, passed away at the age of 22 while serving indigenous communities in the Philippines. Rodriguez founded the Amado Khaya Initiative to honor his activist commitments. Her younger son, Zee, is learning to be a farmer. A dynamic and inspirational speaker, Rodriguez has addressed thousands of people around the world through keynote speeches, lectures and workshops from prestigious universities like Oxford University, to community-based organizations.
Be the Imposter: Navigating Institutions While Serving Your People
Many people working inside institutions carry a quiet tension: how to remain true to their values and communities while navigating spaces that reward caution, conformity, and silence. Drawing from her journey to full professor, department chair, and founder of a university center, Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez reframes the question entirely: what if the goal is not to belong, but to be the imposter? Grounded in ancestral wisdom, social movement history, and lived experience, this talk offers practical guidance for navigating institutions without burning out, assimilating, or losing one’s commitment to community.
The Asian American Movement & Its Legacy
This talk traces the history of the Asian American Movement as a radical, multiracial struggle rooted in anti-imperialism, labor organizing, and global solidarity. Dr. Rodriguez explores how Asian American activism emerged alongside other liberation movements and how its legacies continue to shape contemporary struggles for justice today. Audiences are invited to reflect on what has been remembered, what has been erased, and how movement histories can inform more principled and powerful action in the present.
Beyond the “Model Minority:” The Complexity of the Contemporary Asian American Community
In this talk, Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez offers new frameworks for understanding Asian American communities in the present moment. Drawing on movement history, global migration, and organizing traditions, she reframes Asian America not as a cultural category, but as a political formation shaped by global forces and collective resistance. This talk invites audiences to engage Asian America with greater clarity, depth, and solidarity.
Migrants for Export: Labor, Migration, and the Global Filipino Experience
Fight & Build: Moving From Resistance to Regenerative Change
Much of today’s change work is described through the language of resistance, fighting back, pushing against, dismantling harm. But what becomes possible when we also think in terms of restoration, creation, and building? In this talk, Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez invites audiences to reflect on the limits of protest politics while exploring what it means to live into the world we are working toward now. Drawing on social movements, community organizing, and her land-based work, she shares case studies of people who are building new ways of living, relating, and caring for one another, cultivating futures that are more regenerative, grounded, and life-giving.
Sowing Seeds: Land Lessons on Love and Liberation
After decades in academia and organizing, Dr. Rodriguez made the decision to return to the land. This deeply reflective talk draws on her life as a regenerative farmer, educator, and mother, offering lessons from land-based practice about grief, love, responsibility, and freedom. Rooted in Indigenous knowledge, movement history, and radical love, Sowing Seeds invites audiences to imagine liberation not only as a political project, but as a daily practice of care, relationship, and renewal.
