At 5 feet tall with short, cropped hair, Lolita Compas looks more the part of nurturing friend than forceful lobbyist.

But once she begins talking and firing off facts in her deliberate staccato style, it is easy to see how she rose through the ranks to become the first non-American born president of the largest nurses’ union in the state.

And, it is no surprise that the first immigrant to secure the position is Filipino – there are, after all, an estimated 6,000 Filipino nurses statewide and the group has long been one of the fastest growing blocs in the profession.

Ms. Compas, 57, emigrated to the United States in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree from St. Paul College of Manila and one year of nursing under her belt. She quickly passed the required exam and joined her sister at Cabrini Medical Center on East 19th Street.

Now, 35 years later, Cabrini is still her second home. But her resume is sprinkled with the dozens of positions she’s held and awards she’s earned over the years. And, she is reigning over the 34,000-member New York State Nurses Association, the most powerful union of its kind.

Ms. Compas was an unlikely activist in her early days at Cabrini, but that is precisely when the activism juices began pumping through her blood. As a newcomer, she quietly went about her business, tending to patients and rarely making small talk with the other nurses.

But, as she tells it, she grew frustrated when a cluster of her coworkers made a habit of yapping during their shifts and then complaining about how much work they had as the end of the day closed in. She could have faded into the backdrop and let them continue, but instead she spoke up.

“It was a turning point for me,” she said, during a recent interview in her small sixth-floor office at Cabrini. “Before I knew it I was the voice. I found myself speaking up on behalf of the people that couldn’t articulate.”

When American nursing agencies began recruiting Filipinos to plug up staffing holes, Lolita Compas emerged as the natural liaison. She helped to thwart cultural misunderstandings and to bridge sometimes-strained relationships between nurses and hospital administrators.

“Filipinos are intelligent, but they are passive,” she said, explaining that they needed someone to educate them on American workplace etiquette.

When the nurses grew disenfranchised in the late 1980s at the height of the shortage, Lolita grew more involved with NYSNA. Since then, she’s served on several key NYSNA committees, including collective bargaining and human rights, both of which she ultimately chaired. She also served as president of the Filipino Nurses Association from 1998 to 2000.

An Internet search for her will turn up dozens of hits in publications like The Filipino Express and the Filipino Reporter, chronicling her years as an advocate for the minority nurses who have mushroomed into the majority of the nursing profession.

Today, when she is invited to speak to large groups – which is pretty often – and asked how she made it to the top of her field during a pivotal and combative time in health care, she tells her audience it was a ground-up trajectory. She started as all nurses do, providing bedside care to patients. After years in the intensive care unit and the emergency room, she now spends much of her time in Albany fighting for things like mandated nurse-to-patient ratios and funding for nursing school.

Her counterparts in management at Cabrini, who often oppose her on the issues, describe her as a class act, despite the labor disputes they’ve had.

“I’m her boss, I can be as hard as I want to, but she does a good job,” said the director of nursing, Patricia Lewis. “She’s involved over and above the practice of nursing. It’s much more than a job for her. Cabrini is a second home for her.”

One of the biggest accomplishments of her career was her work for NYSNA’s Human Rights Council, which led to an investigation by the state attorney general’s office in the late 1980s. It resulted in widespread sanctions for many large employment agencies, which were found to be exploiting nurses by taking unfair cuts of their salaries.

Ms. Compas – who is known to many nurses as “Aunt Lolit”- is one of 11 children. Her mother was a homemaker, and her father held several jobs, including one at her uncle’s coconut business in the Philippines. One of her original goals in coming to America was to help her tight-knit family with money. But over the years, as her family settled here, her spare time turned to helping others through her church and nonprofit groups.

Ms. Compas, who is single, lives four blocks from the hospital and walks to work. She breezes through the hospital at ease, always in pumps that add one inch to her petite frame.

And even outside the hospital, she rarely stops her toiling. She was, for a long time, active in the Democratic Party (she has a photo with former President Clinton hanging in her office to prove it). And, she has key roles with the city’s Philippine Consulate General, organizing Philippine Independence Day.

“She has the technical knowledge and skills in her field so that when she talks to American counterparts she is credible,” said New York’s Filipino Consul General, Cecilia Rebong. “She is a great source of pride. The community is lucky to have her.”

As for Lolita, she says, “it’s a blessing to integrate both my culture and American culture” and to give nurses, particularly immigrants, a louder collective voice.

“I’m not here for popularity, I’m not here to gain prominence,” she said. “I believe nursing is a noble profession, to take care of people at the most vulnerable times in their lives. Being a nurse is really like a calling.”