Linda Oalican

Linda Oalican is co-founder and former executive director of the Damayan Migrant Workers Association, a workers-based and workers-led organization that empowers Filipino migrant workers, mostly domestic and care workers, to fight for their labor, immigration, health, and gender rights. In her homeland, the Philippines, Linda was a student, a community organizer, and a political activist. She worked as a government employee for many years and engaged in the organizing of government employees. In the late 1990s, she made the fateful decision to migrate to the US to support her children’s college education. Like many Filipino professional women, Linda worked as a domestic worker for over a decade, and personally experienced the systemic abuses and exploitation in the domestic work industry. Drawing upon her organizing background in the Philippines, in 2002 Linda co-founded Damayan with fellow Filipina domestic workers to organize workers and expose the problems and abuses in the industry. With her thought leadership, Damayan launched its flagship campaign against labor trafficking and modern-day slavery of Filipino domestic workers.