Fellows mentioned in this story: Kanakolu Noa

From Hawai‘i Business Magazine:

Raised in Hāna, Maui, Kanakolu Noa grew up surrounded by beauty and ‘ohana. “My parents were very involved in the community,” she says. “My dad was a Hawaiian history teacher, one of seven children, and my mom is one of 14. She worked at a lot of nonprofits.” Noa herself has seven brothers and a sister.

Noa moved to O‘ahu as a teen and attended Saint Francis School before receiving a degree in special education from Gonzaga University, a master’s degree in Indigenous studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and an MBA from Argosy University. She joined Kamehameha Schools in 2010 and is now the interim director of Sustainable Industries there, focusing on food systems.

“One of the recent initiatives is Poi for the People,” she says, with the goal of increasing consumption of kalo and poi. To help with that, fresh, community-milled poi is provided to Kamehameha Schools preschoolers to share with their families. “I was really excited about triangulating food systems, our cultural commitment and ‘āina education,” she says. “It’s not a project so much as a movement. This is about empowering our communities to think about how we take care of our palates, our kūpuna and our keiki.”

Continue reading at HawaiiBusiness.com.