UP College of Mass Communication honors 5 alumna in its Glory Awards 2023
The University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication Alumni Association (UPCMCAA) will honor five outstanding alumni for its 2023 Gawad Gloria Feliciano or Glory Awards.
The 2023 awardees are Lynda Jumilla-Abalos (multimedia journalism), Maria Lourdes Cabaero (community journalism), Martika Ramirez Escobar (independent filmmaking), Atty. Rowena Daroy-Morales (public service), and Paz Verdades Santos (cultural preservation).
Abalos has been a journalist on print, television, radio, and digital platforms for over three decades. She worked for The Philippine STAR, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and ABS-CBN. She was a Marshall McLuhan fellow in 2012, the first broadcast journalist to be awarded the fellowship since its inception in 1997. Before retiring this year, she served as executive editor of ABS CBN News Digital in 2019.
Cabaero is a pioneer and advocate of digital transformation initiatives in Philippine community journalism. She served as the content director for the integrated digital newsroom of SunStar, the only network of community newspapers in the Philippines, and the editor-in-chief of SunStar Cebu, the media group’s flagship newspaper. She was a Sandra Burton–Nieman Fellow from 2013 to 2014, during which she spent an academic year at Harvard University and took courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She’s now a consultant-resource speaker amid her retirement from full-time work.
Escobar made a splash worldwide with her debut feature film Leonor Will Never Die. She is the first Filipino director to win at the Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the United States, a World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Innovative Spirit. Leonor got several international recognitions and was distributed in theaters in the US, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Middle East, and Thailand.
Morales lawyers for the marginalized sectors of society. For many years, she has been extending free legal assistance particularly to abused women and children. As UP professor emeritus, she headed the College of Law’s Office of Free Legal Aid for two decades and coached UP and Philippine law debating teams that won moot court and debate competitions in Washington DC, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur. Her GMA Network program SOS: Serbisyo On the Spot, where she’s co-host and legal resource, won the 2022 Catholic Mass Media Award for Best Public Service Program on Radio.
Santos has been an educator for over four decades and writes essays in literary history and criticism in three languages. She taught at the Colegio de Sta. Isabel, University of Nueva Caceres, Ateneo de Naga University, Miriam College, UP Clark, UP Diliman, and De La Salle University Manila. "Hagong: Mga Osipon" the book she edited together with Francisco Penones Jr., won the National Book Award for Bikol Fiction in 2014. She also won the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino’s Gawad Francisco Balagtas in 2011 for her significant contributions to Philippine and Bikol language and literature; and the Unyon ng Manunulat sa Pilipinas 2011 Gawad Paz Marquez Benitez for her efforts as a literature and communication teacher. To date, the retired professor is a volunteer cultural and ecological worker for Sumaro sa Salog (Unite for the River), an environmental organization in Camarines Sur.
The five awardees will receive sculpted trophies designed by UP professor emeritus Gigi Javier-Alfonso.
In a statement, UPCMC Alumni Association President Malou Choa-Fagar said the five winners emerged from a long list of deserving nominees deliberated upon by seven jurors.
Feliciano, whose name was used in the award, was the founding dean of UP’s mass communication program.
Now in its seventh year, the Glory Awards will be presented during the UPCMC alumni homecoming on Nov. 11 at the UP Film Institute in UP Diliman.
Alumni homecoming tickets are worth P1,000, covering the dinner, awards show, raffle participation, and alumni membership fee.
Jay Durias of OPM band South Border and acoustic duo Dindo & Ryan will entertain the guests.