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The Ones to Watch
Billy Alabsi
Bay Area Restaurant Owner
·By: Mbaire
Some people measure life by milestones of success. Billy Alabsi measures it by the willingness to keep moving. After high school in Yemen, he came to America searching for opportunity and the chance to build a better life. Since then, his journey has been shaped by reinvention: building businesses, losing everything, rebuilding, and finding the strength to begin again more than once. Through uncertainty, loss, and chapters that might have left others defeated, Billy has held onto one conviction: difficult seasons do not last forever. Today, in San Francisco, he is building once again, holding tightly to optimism, purpose, and the belief that life can be rebuilt.
Victor Ochieng
Documentary Filmmaker
By: Mbaire
Victor Ochieng is not your typical filmmaker. At 33, the Kenyan-born, Bay Area-based documentary filmmaker has gone from mimicking radio journalists as a kid on the streets of Nairobi, earning himself the nickname ‘Presenter,’ to working on Emmy Award-winning productions including PBS’s [Climate California](https://www.pbs.org/video/machina-ex-deo-5sakts/) during his internship at[Northern California Public Media](https://norcalpublicmedia.org/spring-2025-cohort)while studying at the [UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.](https://journalism.berkeley.edu/person/victorochieng/) He once dreamed of becoming a priest. He still wants to spread the word. He just found a bigger pulpit.
Sareeta Young
Creative Producer
By: Mbaire
Sareeta Young didn't grow up thinking she'd become a filmmaker, and for years photography stayed a hobby while she searched for something more "practical," until a film class at [Berkeley City College](https://www.berkeleycitycollege.edu/) changed how she saw a camera, turning it from a way to capture a beautiful image into a way to make that image speak. Today, as founder of [BLKReels](https://blkreels.com/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio), Sareeta is still building a creative life on her own terms and finding ways to keep creating even when life gets heavy. In this conversation with Akilis World, she talks about the grandmother who first put a camera in her hands, the decision to build something official instead of waiting for an industry to let her in, and the moment she decided: "I'm not going to lose."