When she was growing up, Josee Matela would tell her family that she spoke eight languages. That included, English, Filipino, and Boston. She grew up wanting to go to college in Boston, and achieved those dreams by attending BU as a first-generation student.
Now, Josee is a postgraduate, young professional living and working in digital marketing. In this episode of the BOSFilipinos Podcast, she shares her experience as a first-generation student, young professional, and Filipino-American.
Listen to the full conversation below, or subscribe to our show on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify.
Transcript
[MUSIC]
Kaitlin Milliken: Hello, and welcome to the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken, and this show is obviously made by BOSFilipinos.
In each episode of our podcast, we highlight a different aspect of Filipino life in the Greater Boston area. So today we’ll be profiling a member of that community: Josee Matela. Josee is a woman of many talents. She’s a Community and Special Projects Manager at FinTech Sandbox and a digital marketing specialist for Surround Insurance. And on top of that, she’s the founder of her own marketing consulting business Matelamade LLC.
She and I actually met in college, when we overlapped during our time at Boston University. We worked at the university’s television station. Josee wrapped up her time at BU in May of 2020 as a first-generation college graduate. She created the First Gen Graduated project, which documents her stories and those of other first-generation students who missed out on their 2020 graduation ceremonies.
During our conversation Josee and I discussed her professional life, her experience as a first-gen student at BU, and her relationship with culture.
Thanks so much, Josee for being here today.
Josee Matela: So glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Katie.
Kaitlin Milliken: So you've been in Boston for five years. Can you talk a little bit about what brought you to the area? And what that transition to being in Massachusetts was like?
Josee Matela: Absolutely. So when I was a little kid — we're gonna start with one of those stories — I would tell my family that I spoke eight different languages, including English, Filipino Spanish, and one of them was actually Boston. Now, I will say that I was neither fluent in any of the languages except for English. But when I would talk to my family, I said, “Oh, I know how to speak Boston.” And that meant I could park the car in Harvard Yard, imagine a three-year-old Filipino girl saying that my love for Boston started out when I was really young. So my aunt, who I'm very close with, she went to BU for her undergrad and went to Tufts for her grad school.
And Boston was this mystical land of her adventures and her heart and her younger years that I fell in love with. And while she was up here, she ended up meeting my uncle who lived in Watertown. And they would always tell me stories about their times up in Boston, and my uncle's family's still here. And so it was just always this affinity for the city knowing that I had such a family history there. And that was kind of really cool for me.
And then I also would always say that I would go to Boston University when I was younger, and I didn't know college nor higher education. And I could barely read at a fifth grade level. But I thought that being the five-year-old with my dreams, and my hopes, I would walk around in my BU sweatshirt, and tell everyone I was going there. And I'm sure they were very believing of what I would be doing. But hey, I made it happen. So yeah, I mean, I've always wanted to be in Boston, I grew up loving the Boston sports teams, genuinely. I just thought of it as this next step, this new place where I could pursue the things I was passionate about, move away from home, but also find a place that was somewhat familiar, because of all the times I'd been there and heard stories about it.
So I went to be for my undergrad, I finished my degrees in journalism and international relations. And in the meantime, with the pandemic going on, I thought, “What better place to get my footing start out in Boston?” I think I'm ready for the next step to see where it'll lead me. But I know that Boston will always be that home for me.
Kaitlin Milliken: I want to talk a little bit about the First Gen Graduates project that you sort of launched and your experience as a first-gen college student. Can you talk a little bit about what that project is and what inspired you to do that?
Josee Matela: Absolutely. So I am a first-generation American, my mother's from the Philippines. So is my father, but I was raised by a single mother and the village that helped raise me as we all know, Filipinos, you always take care of your kind which is really cool. I'm grateful for the extended family, but actually they turned into a big melting pot. I say I grew up with five moms, two dads.
And so I was really cautious and worried when I was applying for colleges as a high school student. Because I was low-income, I was first-gen, I was not sure about where I wanted to go. And I knew that I really needed a good financial aid package, because we all know college is really expensive. And after a few months, and some programs, thankfully, I was like, “You know, this is something I want to do.”
And when I got to college, it was scary. It was daunting, it was an environment that I wasn't used to. But I felt primed for because you know, when you are so excited to be somewhere, and just grateful to be there in the first place that I think that helps to propel you and kind of erase some of the fear that you have. I did have a lot of imposter syndrome, I did feel like there were points where I didn't fit in with my peers, whether that be from an income level, whether that be from an experience level, like everyone was talking about their summers and Europe and I'd never left the country.
I wanted to start First Gen Grads because it was an opportunity to really celebrate the first-gens who are graduating college in 2020. It's a pandemic, a lot of people aren't having graduation ceremonies, that ceremonial walk across the stage that us, our families, our communities were really looking forward to kind of left for the wayside — all for really good reasons. So you know, it's not an anger that it had to happen but more of a disappointment in some ways. You wish that you would have that chance to walk across the stage to have your family come see you.
Kaitlin Milliken: Right, there's a little bit of grieving over that loss of the experience. I understand that I feel like a lot of people understand that in different ways this year, but college students who were set to graduate and high school students were set to graduate especially.
Josee Matela: Even though there is a pandemic, that doesn't diminish the work that they've done throughout their whole careers, their lives, the things their parents sacrificed, the things that they had to make. So I started a little project just to highlight some of the stories. And as a journalism grad, thankfully, I had done a lot of writing before. So it was just writing little vignettes of a few different people. And it was a really enlightening experience. And I think that it was something I really cherished and was amazing getting to hear these stories. I genuinely wish I had the bandwidth to continue it more. But I also know that it was a really tough summer.
And I had to take a step back, kind of just be very grateful for the opportunity to see what I had done and, you know, hope that what I did put out there was something that could inspire other fresh ends entering college, high school students, or even people who are in college now trying to see what's possible down the line.
Kaitlin Milliken: Yeah, definitely. That's really great. A good way to celebrate things when celebration feels like it's in short order, but it's more important than ever. So you are a marketing professional. And I know, recently you started a new job, a first post grad job. During that job search period you founded Matela Made. Can you talk about what that is and why you launched your own hustle?
Josee Matela: I mean, if you're a millennial, if you're Gen Z, I'm the older version of Gen Z, it seems like we are in #hustlemode. The typical salary jobs that people had grown accustomed to in older generations, the “I could pay for college with my summer job situation” is not our cup of tea, nor is it reality now. So I think we're finding a new evolution of the worker of passion. And for me, I think that's the biggest thing. It's realizing that a lot of people are out here pursuing their passions, whether that be you work a nine-to-five, and then you have a side hustle. Whether it be “Oh my gosh, my side hustle is picking up, I can turn it into my full time job.”
And for me, I kind of wanted to be in the mindset that I couldn't wait for opportunities to happen. I kind of had to make it happen myself. And so for me, I wanted to start this small business as a way to one, fulfill that quote unquote, “American Dream” and start doing the things that I wanted to do that I was passionate about that I knew, thankfully, could help me put food on the table, pay my rent. And it's definitely a learning experience coming from a background that's not specifically marketing. But thankfully, I've had some PR, marketing experience through different internships. And I want to really trust myself to go ahead and start a small business and start onboarding clients and creating really cool things because it's what I think I've been training to do and what I feel really passionate about.
Kaitlin Milliken: So you mentioned earlier that sort of your Filipino family, being a Filipino American shaped your decisions in college or just experience as a first-generation college student. How has being Filipino shaped the next step of your young life as a person who's no longer in school or like a young professional living in Boston?
Josee Matela: My mom left her home country, her little city of Alangalang Leyte, to come to the US to pursue her dreams, and so did my aunt. Wherever your next step lies, there's always this opportunity to just reach for it and go for it, even if it's absolutely scary and as daunting as moving halfway across the world.
And another thing with that, is something that my Nina told me, which is “they can take away your money, they can take away your goods, your home, your assets, however it is, but the one thing they can't take away from you is your education.” And that was a really big motivator throughout high school throughout college, especially because I grew up in a low income household where there wasn't much to go around. So for me, this was a really crazy opportunity to be in Boston, and to be running with the big guys and doing my own thing and learning every day. And in my experience, and from what I know and see in my family and my Filipino community that I was raised in. There is this sense of hard working. There's a sense of grit. There is this sense of, we don't take anything for granted. We are so lucky for every day that passes, and we are here to run at it with open arms and just to tackle it as we need to. And there is not a sense of pride in terms of boastfulness, rather, it's this “we know what our family has gone through what our ancestors have done, all the sacrifices that have happened.” And we let that sort of lead our mindset, not to take anything for granted, not to assume that anything is something that you just automatically deserve, but rather something that you are pushing for and finding joy and hope and wisdom through and.
Kaitlin Milliken: Like community and connection.
Josee Matela: Every generation there is a new form of evolution, there's a new form of who each generation is, and you can tell them with, like your lolos and lolas, and you can tell it what your ates and you can tell it with your aunties and how everyone seems to change as people start to experience new things as people start to be raised in different societies, if you will. And the biggest thing for me was also finding the ways that made me unique from or our generation unique from our parents generations or the generations before that, where even though there may be a difference in some values, or some sort of traditions that have been passed on, there's the same overlying theme of, paving your own way. Of finding community and finding joy in even the smallest things and really taking our Filipino heritage, our Filipino character and applying it where we want.
Kaitlin Milliken: Great and I think that's a perfect note to end on. Thank you so much Josee for your time.
Josee Matela: Thanks for having me sending all of my love to the kapamilya.
[Music]
Kaitlin Milliken: This has been the BOSFilipinos Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlin Milliken. Music for our show was made by Matt Garamella. Special thanks to Josee for joining us. You can follow Josee on instagram at @matelamadellc. That’s Matela with one L. If you liked this episode of our show, you can subscribe to the BOSFilipinos Podcast on your streaming platform of choice. You can also follow us on Instagram, @bosfilipinos, to stay connected. If you have ideas of what we should cover, you can let us know at bosfilipinos.com. Thanks for listening and see you soon.