Dawn Bohulano Mabalon

Career In 1999, Mabalon and Dillon Delvo co-founded The Little Manila Foundation in order to preserve what remained of the Little Manila neighborhood of Stockton, California.

In 2004, Mabalon became a faculty member at San Francisco State University; she was an associate professor of history. She focused her work on the history of Filipino Americans, Filipinos in Stockton, and Filipinos role in the 20th-century labor movement. Mabalon was also on the board of trustees of the Filipino American National Historical Society. In 2015, Mabalon was interviewed about the November 2015 Paris attacks by Voice of America, as she and her husband were visiting the area at the time. In 2017, Mabalon, along with Gayle Romasanta, wrote a children's book about Larry Itliong called Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong; the book was published a year later. In 2018, Mabalon visited the Delano campus of Bakersfield College, which is in the area where the Delano grape strike began, for an event about archiving; at the event she spoke to encourage Filipino Americans to preserve their family histories, with the goal of expanding historical narratives.

Honors and awards In 2013, the Filipino Women's Network listed her among their "100 Most Influential Filipinas in the World".

Death In August 2018, Mabalon died while snorkeling off of Kauai. Mabalon had an asthma attack when she was out with her sister, and her inhaler did not alleviate her symptoms. She died at the hospital. Mabalon was buried at San Joaquin Catholic Cemetery. Mabalon was survived by her husband of ten years, Jesus Perez Gonzalez.

Legacy Mabalon's work of documenting the history of Filipino Americans continued at the Little Manila Center that she had co-founded even after her death . Mabalon authored three books and was working on a fourth. The San Francisco Chronicle described Mabalon as "a major figure to California's Filipino Americans".