Atty. Minami O. Iwayama is a sociologist, an academic, and a lawyer. She started her journey into the social sciences as a student of the Economics program at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. While a student of Economics, she found herself more fascinated with Sociology courses and subsequently shifted to the Sociology program of the same university. In 2015, she obtained her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. In the same year, she started her pursuit of a Master of Arts degree in Sociology from the same university and graduated in 2017. She then proceeded with her pursuit of legal education and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree in 2022. A year after, she passed the Philippine Bar Exam to become a lawyer. As a sociologist, she has published more than 15 different articles in reputable peer-reviewed journals. The foci of her research include religion, education, deviance, gender, and labor migration policies and practices. As an academic, she has taught various Sociology and interdisciplinary social science courses at several top universities in the Philippines, including Ateneo de Manila University, the University of Sto. Tomas, and her current home institution, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. As a lawyer, she has been involved in civil, criminal, and labor-related cases. The combination of her sociological, academic, and legal experiences provides her with rich insights into human behavior and different angles of Philippine social reality. Before being elected as a member of the PSS Board, she has accumulated significant organizational experiences as former president of UP Socius (one of the student organizations for Sociology students in UPLB), as former Secretary-General of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Philippine League of Sociology Students (PLSS), and as faculty adviser of both the PLSS Local and National Chapters, and Senior Adviser of the PUP Sociology Society.