RACHEL CEMENTINA SABALBORO

A month into a new job and two months into a new marriage, the recently appointed San Luis Obispo Symphony Executive Director RACHEL CEMENTINA SABALBORO stopped by the office for a get-to-know-you visit. Here are a few highlights from our conversation . . .

So, Rachel, where are you from? I was born and raised here in San Luis Obispo. Went to school here: Los Ranchos, Laguna, and SLO High. I was the middle child. I have an older brother and a younger sister. I guess I’d say that I was a quiet kid, very involved in church. And I tried a lot of things—dance, played the flute, piano, theater, sang in the choir—but never really stuck with any of them. It took me a long while to find the thing that stuck, the hobby I love, which is baking. I love to bake. Especially cakes. I recently baked my own wedding cake.

You’ve got a couple of interesting last names. What part of the world are they from? They’re both actually Filipino. I grew up with the last name Cementina, which people always thought was Italian. But we really didn’t know anything about the Philippines until somebody did a 23andMe test online. We learned that my grandpa immigrated from there. So, when I started dating my husband, he asked me about my last name and his eyes just lit up when I told him where it was from. Turns out, his grandpa is also from the Philippines. It’s been a lot of fun because I never knew anything at all about the culture, but now we are making lumpia and even learned to say a few words in Tagalog. Since we both have roots there, I wanted to embrace the culture.

How did your family end up in the area? was my grandparents who moved the family here. My grandpa was hired as a dean at Cuesta College. Then, my dad, who was a drummer on tour with a Christian musical group, met my mom, who was a singer. This was back in the seventies. One thing led to another, and they got married and settled down here. I should also mention that my dad—and here’s where I’m going to cry because he passed away in August—he was actually a member of the SLO Symphony for almost thirty years. I remember watching him play in the symphony as a kid. We’d be in the crowd whispering to each other, “Where’s Dad? Where is he? Can you see him?” Then we’d spot him there in the percussion section doing what he loved most.

So, walk us down the path for how you ended up at the symphony yourself. Sure, so, college for me was at Biola, which is down in Southern California. I studied business there. And as part of that curriculum, I took a non-profit marketing class, and that’s where I realized that I could use my business degree to help the community for good. Right then and there I decided that I wanted to be in non-profits and haven’t looked back since. My first job after graduation was with the AmeriCorps. I was placed with the United Way of SLO County, which turned into a full-time role after my service year. Locally, that led to stints at the Link Family Resource Center, and the YMCA. Then, one day, a friend forwarded the job description to me [for the SLO Symphony executive director position] with a note that said, “Hey, Rachel, have you seen this?” I just thought to myself, “Wow, this is it—this is what I want to do.”

What challenges are you seeing in your new role? The primary challenge right now comes in navigating our sixty-year-old community symphony to the other side of pandemic recovery. I’ve really come to understand just how hard the symphony, and the arts community as a whole, were hit by the pandemic. It’s like the car was cruising along at sixty miles an hour, then slammed on the brakes, coming to a complete stop for a whole year, and now we have to start driving again. So, now, and not to any of my credit, but this season has definitely increased over last season, which was actually an increase over zero, a non-season. It’s so great to see that people are back and ready to go to concerts again. We just need to keep building upon that momentum now, which, because so many positive things were already in place before, it’s actually more of a rebuild.