Life & Work with Alpha Faye of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alpha Faye.

Hi Alpha , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
As the first child of my mother’s large family (she was one of 7 children!) and fortuitously the millionth baby born in a hospital in Manila, my mother named me ALPHA – “the beginning”. My mother left for America to pursue nursing when I was 6 months old and with an estranged father, I was raised by my Tita (aunt) for the following 4 years. Highly adaptable, at 4 1/2 years old, I hopped on a plane to America after reuniting with my mother and meeting my 1 and year old brother, Chris. I met my adopted father after landing in NYC, and my first words in America were, “May I have a hotdog please?”

I was raised in Brooklyn, then Long Island and endured my parents’ 8 year divorce, thanks to my Nana, Helen Mahone – my mother’s mentor; a retired nurse, who my Mom asked to raise my brother and I after my parents separated. My adopted father and biological mother both remarried, so I have 6 other siblings (the eldest unfortunately passed in 2021). I escaped my childhood tribulations with dance as my form of therapy, dreaming of Broadway, training at American Theatre Dance Workshop.

I graduated from Great Neck South High School then attended College of the Holy Cross, initially a premed student with a dance minor but instantly fell in love with acting during a 101 course.. I soon became a Theatre major, with a double concentration in Southeast Asian studies and Deaf studies, and danced in the Balinese gamelan. During the summers, I worked at an educational organization’s learning center in Greenwich Village, NYC. I love working with students of all ages (even adults).

With the completion of undergrad, I set my sights for Los Angeles but with only $20 in my pocket, I stayed in Massachusetts and worked at the educational organization’s learning center in Boston. When the company needed to staff a project manager position for a school literacy partnership with a “Bush” Alaska district, adaptable Alpha jumped at the chance and relocated within 2 weeks notice.

I lived in Alaska for 3 years where I was flown school to school in 4-seater planes, stunned by the beauty of the Northern Lights and married a wonderful man after only knowing him for 3 months. We almost moved there permanently but the risk of death by plane crash became imminent. So the educational organization promoted me to project director and we relocated to Gallup, NM for 3 years, where I worked with a large district with schools on the Navajo reservation. During the summers, I opened up and developed a learning center on Maui, HI. I discovered that, even though I was born on an island, I wasn’t meant for island life, as I was raised in a big city.

Another promotion finally moved us to San Luis Obispo where their Home Office was located, with Los Angeles only being a 3-hour drive south. My husband found a dance studio for me where I ended up teaching and co-directed a college dance competition team. I made two of my best friends there, one of which founded the studio, Street Heat Dance. My then-husband also found an acting studio, Actor’s Edge, where I reignited my love for acting.

When my mother unexpectedly died in 2014, I vowed to take her advice to embrace my passion for acting/film-making and decided it was time to finally move to Los Angeles. My husband wasn’t meant for big city life so we arranged an amicable divorce, I self-demoted myself and moved to Los Angeles – at a time when several dance team members were also moving to Los Angeles. In fact, to save money, I moved in with the youngest dance team member who had just graduated from high school.

After moving to Los Angeles, I started dating a fellow acting/filmmaker friend and I produced our first indie feature film, ’This Side of Summer’, filmed on location in San Luis Obispo. In 2020, during the pandemic, we mourned the demise of our partnership then welcomed the birth of our beautiful daughter, and agreed to coparent. My daughter’s name is Mila, pulled from “milagro”, Spanish for “miracle”, as I had trouble conceiving with my then-husband and thought I’d never birth a child. Mila has been a true blessing and I’m so thankful for my close freinds and family, near and far, that support me in various ways in raising her, as “it takes a village”.

The last 5 years, I’ve been fortunate to work in both fields I’m passionate about – education and filmmaking. I’m grateful to be part of several artistic communities – IAMA Theatre Company, Actor’s Edge (Aaron Metchik opened up a studio in LA!), The Artist’s Space, and LA Filipino-American filmmaking community.

The education company I grew up in, downsized in 2024, which pivoted me to venture in freelance educational services. I now work with a couple ed therapy companies as a private educator. I haven’t lost sight of my main reason I moved to Los Angeles: I continue to hone my acting skills and write my educational television series and romantic drama feature.

I’m currently producing a couple friends’s indie films projects. The main passion project in development is Jodie Bentley and James Tabeek’s family drama feature ‘What They Left Us’, with director Justin Giddings attached. It’s about the time in your life when you parent your parents, through the last stage of their life, even though you haven’t quite figured out how to fully live your own. The story definitely resonates, recalling my mother’s hospitalization and sudden death.

2024 was the toughest year (emotionally and financially) I’ve endured. Though 2025 post-LA fires presented it’s own set of significant challenges, my resilience and positive outlook helped me through. I’m hopeful for what the Universe provides me and my communities in 2026.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Has anyone’s life ever been a smooth road? One character trait I’m grateful for is my resilience! The blessings I am fortunate to have are my communities. Without resilience or community, I would not have survived 2024 – by far the toughest year of my life.

I lost a good friend and an aunt I’m close to, to cancer. Thanksgiving 2024 marked a 10-year anniversary of my Mom’s passing. My work hours were drastically cut, putting me into severe debt and eventually, the company I grew up in dissolved my department and I became unemployed for the first time in my life. The cherry on top: a long-term romantic relationship ended abruptly. Needless to say, I was depressed and functioned off a scarcity mindset for a majority of 2024.

2025 started with the horrendous fires in LA, where I watched my work & child’s school community burn down to the ground. Last year continued to be strenuous, with ongoing financial hardships, but I made a decision to “never waste an opportunity offered by a good crisis” (Niccolo Machiavelli) and moved forward with a different mindset.

I transitioned to freelance private instruction / “tutoring” (I placed tutoring in quotes because my skillset offers more than traditional tutoring but it’s simpler to state) and started to build a client base of wonderful students I look forward to working with each week. I also went out on a limb and applied to San Bernardino Valley College, thanks to a dear friend’s recommendation, for an adjunct professor position, where I can marry both passions in education and filmmaking.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have always had a passion for the brain, teaching, building community, and the performing arts. I am a multi-hyphenate: Educator/Actor/Producer/Writer.

Growing up as a dancer, I started teaching when I was 14 years old, as a dance tutor. I then trained to teach students in reading, comprehension, and math, with aspirations to become a professor in later-adulthood. At 17 years old, I was one of the youngest clinicians at a NYC learning center of a prestigious national education organization. I then lived in remote areas of the U.S. and became one of the company’s youngest project director then regional manager. I reached a pinnacle in my career when one of the co-founders invited me to oversee instruction at their flagship learning center.

I am definitely the only one with my kind of background, between the roles I’ve held and the areas I was fortunate to set up literacy projects in; notably my work with indigenous communities. As I mentioned earlier, I now “tutor” but I specialize in developing learning processes through metacognitive instruction. The prestigious education company I grew up in is nationally recognized, with programs that are research validated to change and develop sensory cognitive functions. Implementing the programs, as intended, yields life-changing results, not fleeting compensatory strategies. In the last 20 years, I’ve also read, researched, and implemented instruction based on Alan Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory.

Wherever I taught, I’d also satiated my desire to develop the artistic community, whether it was building a theatre syllabus and introducing ballroom dance in an Alaskan HS, starting a well-attended community trivia night, or co-directing a hip hop college dance team. Each week, of the last 20 years, has been filled with education and the arts.

I took things a step further in 2020. One of my first acting teachers in LA, held “Ethos Reading Sessions” on ZOOM during the Pandemic. He shared that, although it’s obvious I have a passion for acting and telling stories, my ethos aligned with producing. It all clicked! How I collaborate, build community, and move a project forward, whether it’s in education or a passion film project IS Producing. It wasn’t a fluke that I produced my first no-budget feature, ‘This Side of Summer’ in 2016. I soon started to produce other short films and projects. I’ve since set my sights on showrunning a children’s education television series, truly fusing both my passions in education and dynamic, visual story telling. It’s in development! Thank you Jordan Lane Shappell for that illuminating ethos read!

The WORK I proudly talk about wouldn’t exist without the following artists, community leaders, and mentors I’m grateful to collaborate with (in alphabetical order):
Actors Edge/Aaron Metchik, Alex Roman, Allen Negrete, Amber Barnard, Andres & Victoria Lerner, Anika Morris, Chris & Rebecca Gingrich, Cynthia San Luis, Deci Douroux, Donovan Tunay, Faith Santilla, Hedyeh Asefvaziri, Hella Bae (Kristine Gerolaga, Maria Lingbanan, Stacie Gancayco-Adlao), IAMA Theatre Company (The 8 Founders with Artistic Director Stefanie Black and Actors Summer Intensive with Cara Greene Epstein & Laila Ayad), Illuminate Educational Therapy Group/Andrea Chernin, Jessica Redish, Jodie Bentley, Kamar Elliott, Kristin Wheeler, Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, Meriden & Steve Angeles, Priscilla “G.G.” Gingrich, San Bernardino Valley College, Seven Arrows Elementary/Margarita Pagliai, Sparked LA/Stephanie Funk, Syndy Malaver Margot, The Tsunami Brothers (Shea William Vanderpoort and Steven Soria), Tracey Hall

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I view myself as a life explorer – one that isn’t afraid to make bold life moves that often take calculated risks. My parents and aunts/uncles are either in the medical field, educators, or social workers. My choice to pursue a life in the arts goes against those (more traditional) paths. I encourage taking calculated risks if it aligns with your purpose and it doesn’t require stepping over people along the way.

Here’s my list of risks that I’ve taken, whole-heartedly, because I believe the Universe is there to guide me:
– immigrated from the Philippines to America, with family members who were strangers to me at the time
– dropped pre-med to pursue a degree in Theatre
– moved from Boston to “Bush” Alaska, 2 weeks after a contract was offered
– married a beautiful soul 3 months after meeting him (the Northern Lights told me to do it!)
– 2015: self-demoted myself, divorced said beautiful soul (very amicably), and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the Industry, 7 months after my Mom’s unexpected death
– chose to birth a child in the Pandemic as a single mother and raising my miracle 2,500 miles away from family
– developing an S-corp and LLC, post Industry contraction, job loss, the LA fires, and during this administration/regime

All of these bold life choices were calculated risks. When I’ve had a whim or an inclination, I research, talk with close friends and family, make plus/delta lists and concretize logistics. Bold life choices are risky because nothing is guaranteed but if you move forward with some of it fleshed out, you’ll most likely achieve what you set out to do. I’ve always viewed life as the journey, not hyper focused on the results. As long as you’re happy and present (which require a lot of mental health work), enjoy the journey and take calculated risks!

Pricing:

• If you’re interested in education or professional development services, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @alphacfaye
• Facebook: Alpha ONeal
• LinkedIn: Alpha O’Neal
• Other: IMDb Alpha Faye

Image Credits
Hella Bae professional photo shot by Pamela J. Bautista