Mabuhay, I’m Elenita.
I’m a media producer, cultural anthropologist, and science communicator based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Driven by community
Culture and heritage are at the center of everything I do. My passion is storytelling, and that begins with my story, my family’s story, and the stories of my communities. Blending ancestral knowledge with academic degrees in anthropology, I embed community values at the core of my work.
My Approach
Informed by research
For the last decade, I’ve worked side-by-side with the nation’s leading researchers to ensure cutting-edge scientific discoveries are communicated in an accessible manner. In that time, I’ve developed a sharp nose for sniffing out intriguing angles and a penchant for meticulous fact checking.
Biography
Elenita Makani O’Malley is a queer Filipina and Irish American storyteller from the Bay Area. Elenita holds a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from Georgetown University and a Master of Arts in Museum Anthropology from Columbia University. By day, she works as a science communicator, crafting videos that demystify complex topics about the planet. Her video work has been featured in exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences, Stanford University, and more.
As a media producer, she works start-to-finish, meaning that she researches and pitches video ideas, writes scripts and interviews subjects, operates cameras and lighting, and edits final deliverables. An expert at working on slim and scrappy communications teams, Elenita has also developed marketing strategy to deliver communications to diverse audiences, managed social media strategy and content development, and is a mean project manager.
Outside of work, you can find her practicing martial arts, digging through archives, and cataloguing the best egg tarts in Oakland Chinatown. Her latest obsession is producing her first documentary film, “Oakland Ilokana.”
Get in touch!
This is me. Waiting for you. To get in touch.