Biography
Raymond Partolan (he/him/his) is the National Field Director at APIAVote. For almost a decade, he has been an advocate for immigrant and refugee communities. Raymond has spent his entire life living in the Deep South. Prior to coming to APIA Vote, he spent several years as the Program Associate at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta. There, his team led the charge to register over 11,000 new voters, directly engage with thousands of historically underrepresented Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and defeat anti-immigrant legislation at the Georgia State Capitol.
Raymond is a coalition-builder and played a key role in the establishment of the Georgia Immigrant Alliance for Civic Empowerment. He has engaged with the media on hundreds of occasions to bring the challenges faced by communities of color into the public eye.
Raymond was named one of the 25 Most Influential Asian Americans in Georgia in 2018 and 2019. An avid musician, he won three Grammy Awards in 2019 for his work on the highly-acclaimed jazz album, American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom. Raymond graduated summa cum laude from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. He is trilingual in English, Spanish, and Tagalog.