Biography

Kukui is the founder and executive director of the Wai’anae Community Re-Development Corporation (WCRC Kauhale) in Waiʻanae, Hawaiʻi. The organization partners with community and youth development collaborators to provide a educational and entrepreneurial leadership experience that sends area youth to college while operating a 23-acre organic farm and two digital media studios. Kukui works to nurture leadership in youth by cultivating culturally rich, communally relevant and 21st century spaces in which they can manifest their knowledge and skills. This hands-on, accountable approach to growing leaders, a strategy that develops callouses on the hands and brains, is what was instilled in her at the knee of her tutu wahine, her grandmother.