Born and raised in the Philippines, Kamille Manalo got her start in Manila. At age nine, her family packed up their lives and made the journey to Garfield, New Jersey in search of more opportunity.

As a young woman, Kamille’s eyes were set on a stage. With aspirations of becoming a professional dancer, she left the east coast and headed to California. That move paid off when she earned a coveted spot on the Miami Heat dance squad.

But at 22 years old, Kamille experienced domestic violence. A statistic that often leads to fear and silence. For Kamille, it led to a boxing gym.

She walked through the doors of the Ace of Spades Boxing Club as a woman who needed to learn how to defend herself. What she found inside those walls went far beyond technique. She found agency, and she found, in the art of boxing, a path forward.

It’s an experience Kamille does not hide, because she understands its power. Her story is not one of victimhood, it’s one of victory.

Professional boxing has never been an easy world for women to enter, as fighters or as coaches. The sport has been dominated by male trainers, male promoters, and the assumption that women belong on the periphery, not in the corner.

Kamille walked into that world anyway. She began her coaching career teaching women’s classes at the Ontario Boxing Club and the joy she found in helping women discover their own strength brought her great joy. To follow, she began working with young children. Then came the professional fighters.

Notable names like Gabe Rosado, Andre Ewell, Maricela Cornejo, Corey Calliet, and Denis Doughlin began appearing in her training circles, and word traveled fast that this woman could coach.

Then, of course, came the criticism. Elite performance coaching and community fitness coaching, the argument goes, require fundamentally different minds. You have to pick a lane. Basically to say you can’t train fighters and regular people at the same time.

Coach Kammmm rejected that notion. Her philosophy is that the same principles that make a champion make a better human being, and she set out to prove that “yes, you can do both!” And that the gym should be a place for everyone.

By 2022, her reputation had grown to the point that it reached professional boxing at its highest levels. Brandon “The Cannon” Adams, a seasoned professional boxer, brought Coach Kammmm into his corner as one of his trainers. It was a milestone for a Filipina-American woman from New Jersey, forged in a boxing gym she’d entered out of necessity, now training a professional prize fighter.

The partnership went further. Adams and Manalo became business partners, co-founding Cannonnation Boxing Gym, which opened its doors in October 2022 in Santa Fe Springs, California. It’s a proof of concept space where professional fighters train alongside everyday people. Where a kid from the neighborhood can share space with a contender. And where the vision Coach Kammmm held for years finally has a home.

Media outlets and sports brands have recognized her influence, but the title that means most to her didn’t come from any network or company, it came from the people: “The People’s Coach.” It came organically from the people whose lives she changed.

Kamille Manalo entered a sport that didn’t expect her and then reshaped it on her own terms. She built a gym that looks like the community it serves — diverse, determined, and powered by the belief that everyone deserves to feel strong. In the sport of boxing, where legacy is measured in belts and records, Coach Kammmm is building something harder to quantify and far more lasting.