Director, Membership:
Danielle Ocampo
My involvement with FBANC began in 2019. I met FBANC advisory Board Member Ted Borromeo at a CLE event that I hosted as Business Development staff during my time at Paul Hastings LLP. Ted told me about FBANC over a follow up lunch. With no lawyers in the family, the initial thought of a community of Filipino lawyers made more drawn to pursue what I knew would be a challenging career path. Learning about FBANC gave me immediate affirmation that I could be a lawyer too.
After meeting with Ted, past president Laurie Lubiano introduced me to the FBANC community. As a pre-law student, I was nervous and felt like an imposter surrounding myself with lawyers when I was not even close to being one. However, at my first FBANC picnic, I found a family that welcomed me with open arms (Thank you, Antonio!). Since then, this family has grown ever since for me, and despite all my travels and moves, the lawyers of FBANC have always been and continue to be a constant source of assurance that I can be a lawyer too.
Membership is important to me because I can be instrumental and integral in nourishing and developing the bonds that hold this family together. My Membership Director goals and steps to achieve those goals are:
Updating and maintaining our membership directory bank by following up with individual members to ensure their information is accurate and adding new FBANC members to the directory;
Creating profiles with bios and headshots for each member within our membership directory to be more accessible to the public and its legal needs;
And building our talent pipeline and growing our 210 memberships by encouraging more law students and prospective students to become FBANC members.
I am seeking this position because I want to pay forward the resources, opportunities, and connections FBANC has given me. I was hired for my law school summer internships and became a privacy certified attorney because of my FBANC mentors. FBANC graced me with a generous scholarship that allowed me to pay for my Bar prep courses and Bar fees. While nervously waiting for Bar results, I golfed with FBANC friends (not well) who spent the day reinforcing their belief in me. Even once I passed the Bar, FBANC members reached out to me throughout my most recent job search to offer job referrals and make introductions on my behalf.
Ever since I was a prospective student at that first FBANC picnic, I have always felt equipped knowing that FBANC members whole-heartedly made themselves available to me and unhesitatingly opened doors for me. I am thankful for this opportunity to submit my candidacy to be on the Board because FBANC is where I learned what it means to be a Filipino lawyer in service of others. As a new attorney, I align with FBANC’s ready-and-willing attitude to elevate the careers of all community members, no matter where they are in the process. I would be proud to be on the 44th Board of an organization that, through the years, continues to embody this spirit of kabayan.
