About RJ
Founder & Creative Force, Searchlight Studio, LLC
RJ Mabanta is a visionary educator, creative strategist, and liberatory leadership coach with a gift for igniting purpose in individuals and organizations alike. With an MFA in Theatre, an MAEd in Educational Leadership, and two decades of experience spanning school redesign, arts integration, college access, and transformational coaching, RJ weaves storytelling with systems thinking to help changemakers lead boldly and live fully.
As the founder of Searchlight Studio, RJ built a sanctuary for courageous ideas—where heart, heritage, and strategy converge. His work bridges ancestral wisdom and future-forward design, guiding leaders, creatives, and communities through transformation with warmth, clarity, and radical authenticity.
Clients come to RJ not just for solutions—but for resonance, illumination, and a feeling of being seen.
✨ If you’re ready to be visible—not just professionally, but soulfully—RJ will help you step into your story, amplify your truth, and shine in your own brilliance. Your light belongs in the world. Let’s turn it all the way on.
On Leadership
Leadership, for me, has never been about control—it’s always been about connection.
After years of leading schools, coaching teams, and redesigning complex systems, I began to notice a shift in my leadership instincts. I was gravitating toward something older, deeper—what I now recognize as an indigenous way of leading. Before I had the words, I was already remembering.
In this remembering, I reclaimed parts of myself once hidden or quieted:
🌿 My queerness, once coded and compartmentalized, became a source of radical empathy and visionary clarity.
🌿 My Filipino identity, long flattened by colonial scripts, reawakened in the stories, rituals, and community rhythms I now honor in my practice.
🌿 My neurodivergence, once masked for survival, emerged as a superpower—fueling insight, innovation, and emotional precision.
These truths didn’t hinder my leadership. They expanded it. They taught me how to walk between worlds.
I now lead as a bridgewalker—someone who carries the thread between old wisdom and new futures, between heart and system, between vision and action. I bring that same thread-bearing energy to every client, every community, every collaboration.
My Leadership Pillars
🌑 Cycles Over Lines
Linear models divide and rush. Cycles honor return, rhythm, and regeneration. I help leaders embrace timing, seasonality, and the spirals of real growth.
🪡 The Sacred Thread
Whether in teams or systems, I carry the thread between the seen and unseen—identity and strategy, history and hope. Leadership is about weaving wholeness.
🗣️ Naming as Power
What we name, we claim. I create space for leaders to name their truths, wounds, dreams, and lineages—because articulation is liberation.
💛 Arrival as Beloved
You don’t have to earn your worth here. I guide leaders back to themselves—whole, powerful, beloved—so they can lead from deep authenticity.
This is the foundation I bring into every coaching session, workshop, and creative collaboration.
Leadership is not about fixing. It’s about remembering.
It’s about reclaiming your thread—and letting it shine.
If you're ready to lead from your sacred center, I'm ready to walk beside you.
Searchlight Studio transformed my vision into reality, empowering my brand with clarity and purpose. Their commitment to social justice and creativity is truly inspiring.
Jordan Lee
★★★★★