Caroline Cabading is Manilatown Heritage Foundation’s current Board President. She has been the Interim Executive Director of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation since 2015 and transitioned to Executive Director in 2020. Before she took on the role of Executive Director she served on Manilatown’s Board of Directors as Board Vice President from 2014-2019 and then Board President from 2019-2020. She also served as a Junior Board of Directors Member from 2004-2005 to assist in the opening of the new International Hotel Manilatown Center.
Under her leadership the organization more than doubled its income and programming capacity through a combination of social enterprises, crowdfunding campaigns and grant awards from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), Alliance for California Traditional Artists, the Creative Work Fund, Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Center for Cultural Innovation.
As a filmmaker her Manilatown-related credits include, “Rise of the I-Hotel” (2005), “Chinatown” (2017) and the SFAC funded, “The Al Robles Express” (2019). Her current production, “Coming Back to the I-Hotel” is a SFAC funded documentary about former activist tenants of the I-Hotel returning as residents to the new International Hotel Senior Residences nearly 42 years after the 1977 Eviction.
As a jazz musician she produces and performs at Manilatown’s “Club Mandalay” PopUp jazz club and as a traditional Philippine artist she produces, performs and teaches through Manilatown’s “Kommunity Kultura” educational program.
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