WE ARE THE FILIPINA WOMEN'S NETWORK Member Spotlight: WELCOME new FWN Board Member Amar Bornkamp (Global FWN100™ '15) and Malu Rivera Peoples (U.S. FWN100™ '07)

Warm welcome to new FWN Board Member & VP Membership, Amar Bornkamp.

Amar  is a Senior Team Manager in Operations Control at Charles Schwab.   Amar has been with Schwab for a total of 21 ½ years, and in her tenure has led teams in Corporate Actions, Cash Control, and Access & Entitlements.  She currently manages a team in Orlando, Phoenix, and India, that manages oversight and controls over firm applications/systems in order to prevent employee fraud and protect clients and firm assets.  She majored in Business Administration and has over 30 years of experience in the financial industry.

She is passionate about developing others to their full potential and helping them advance in their careers.  As a co-chairperson of the Asian Pacific Islander Network at Schwab (APINS), she coordinates and puts together career development events that focus on how to overcome issues and challenges Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders face in the work force.  In putting together these events she’s worked with other companies and Asian non-profit organizations like Ascend and FWN. 

She also serves on the School Board of St. Bede Catholic School in Hayward and is the chairperson of their Enrollment Committee.  As a member of the St. Bede parish she has been teaching catechism for almost 15 years.  She teaches 3rd and 4th grade parishioners who are preparing to do their First Reconciliation and receive their First Communion.  As a catechist, she’s not only giving back to the church and community, but also living out her childhood dream of being a teacher.

Amar has two sons, and when she’s not spending time with her husband and two boys, she enjoys spending time with her extended family, reading, watching movies, and planning events and parties.  She’s also a big sports fan and a big fan of the SF Giants, SF 49ers, and Golden State Warriors.  

If you have questions about your FWN Membership or to join FWN, Amar is your main contact. Say hello to her at amarb@ffwn.org.

Malu Rivera Peoples has been a FWN member since 2007.

Malu took her first ballet class at the late age of 10 under the tutelage of Felicitas Radaic, Luis Layag and Steve Villaruz.  At age 16, she began a professional career as principal dancer of Dance Theater Philippines. She has worked with national and international figures such as Gener Caringal, Kenneth Gillespie, Armin Wilde, Norman Walker, Luminita Dumitrescu, William Morgan, Alfred Rodriguez, Gray Veredon, and Mikael Kukarev.  Among the popular classics, she performed solo roles in the full-length productions of Swan Lake, Giselle, Don Quixote, Nutcracker, Cinderella, Les Sylphides, and Romeo & Juliet.

She became a member of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD, London) at age 16, qualifying her to prepare children for the annual RAD Children’s Examinations; the same examinations she passed with flying colors as a student.  At 19, while she was dancing for Ballet Philippines, she opened her own school, the Silid-Sining Workshop for the Performing Arts in Manila, which continues to operate to this date.  In 1983, Malu migrated to the United States and by the summer of 1991, she co-founded the Westlake School for the Performing Arts (WSPA) in Daly City.

In her 20 years as WSPA school and artistic director, Malu has been recognized as a choreographer, receiving several Outstanding Choreography Awards for modern, ballet, lyrical jazz, and musicals.  She was awarded the “Outstanding Choreographer” at the Youth America Grand Prix Long Beach Regional in 2004 and 2006.  She stages the full-length ballet, The Nutcracker, each year at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. The school received  YAGP’s “The Outstanding School” Award in 2004 and 2010 and garners top awards for their ensemble works every year in major dance competitions such as Showstoppers Dance Championships, the International Dance Challenge, Spotlight Dance Cup and the prestigious Youth America Grand Prix.