Aganon, Maila, 1975-

Born and raised in the Philippines, Maila Aganon emigrated with her parents in 1992, after she completed her first semester of college. She describes as "typical" her youth as the youngest child (with brothers 5 and 7 years older) of a teacher who worked in another village and a father who worked out of the country. Although independent, she was part of a tightly knit village. The household spoke three languages: her mother's dialect, her father's dialect, and Tagalog. Her maternal grandfather served with the Americans out of Clark Air Base in World War II and was on the Bataan Death March. In the U.S., the family went first to San Francisco, the site of her culture shock. Her parents moved to Las Vegas in the 1990s. Maila followed in 2003, after she bought a house as an investment, intending to rent it out, but realized her rent in San Francisco cost more than her Las Vegas house payment. She talks of the city's growth, growth of the Asian community, and increased Asian dining and shopping opportunities. She describes working full-time at Allstate Insurance and part-time at Bank of America all through college and graduate school at San Francisco State University (with one semester at UNLV), then going into risk management at AAA through her move to Las Vegas, and rising through the ranks at Caesars Entertainment over 9 years to Vice President, Treasury and Risk Finance, and finally to Aon as Senior Vice President.