Jhett Tolentino

According to his self-produced biographical documentary Life Is What You Make It, Tolentino is the youngest child of Gloria Dizon, a native of Prieto Diaz, Sorsogon and Arthur Tolentino, a native of Iloilo whose roots come from Bataan. Tolentino grew up in a severely impoverished area of Barangay Calumpang, Molo, Iloilo City,^[6] which was a few meters across the shore of the Iloilo Strait.

Tolentino attended Calumpang Elementary School (since renamed as Esteban Juntado, Sr. Elementary School) from 1983 to 1989. He entered the Basic Education Unit of University of Iloilo as a high school freshman and took up his secondary education from 1989 to 1993.

His high school education was enabled by a scholarship program promoted by the Our Lady of Miraculous Medal Parish. The scholarship grant is funded by the Meguko Society, a student organization operating at the Jesuit-run Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.^[6] The Meguko Society caters to educational needs of indigenous children from India and the Philippines. Tolentino was awarded scholarship grants from high school to college by the organization.

He wanted to pursue a tourism degree but decided to study accounting at the University of Iloilo due to the lack of course offerings in the region. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Accountancy degree from the university in March 1997.

After graduation, Tolentino worked in Iloilo City at Mercantile Credit Resource Corporation as a general bookkeeper and later, corporate secretary. He worked at Mercantile Credit Resource Corporation from 1997 to 2002. He moonlighted in multinational Hong Kong-based companies from 1999 to 2001: as internal auditor for JP Capital Partners Ltd., and as sales and marketing executive for Inside Fashion.

In 2002, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for a sales and marketing job at The Good Guys, while moonlighting as a waiter for Continental Caterers and as a babysitter.^[6] In 2004, he moved to the New York tri-state area for a mortgage and finance job, where he learned about the theatre industry. Tolentino received a certificate in Nursing Assistance from the American Medical Career Training Center in Jamaica, New York in December 2005.^[7] He worked as a nursing assistant in 2006, and when the market crashed as part of the 2008 recession, he worked in the healthcare industry full-time.

While in New York and working in finance and healthcare, he started writing reviews of theatre shows on his blog.

In February 2016, Tolentino was given recognition by the government of the Philippines through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-Ani ng Dangal for giving international recognition to the Philippines; and was among The Outstanding Young Men and Women of the Philippines who were awarded the same year by President Rodrigo Duterte at Malacañang Palace in December of the same year. In 2019 Tolentino won Best Short Documentary at the NVIFF Awards in Amsterdam.^[8][9] In 2021, Blogtalk with MJ Racadio named him one of the "75 Most Influential Filipino-Americans".^[10]