Hawaiʻi Strategy Lab reframes the question.
Meet our principals. Guided by principles.
We don’t ask what we need to do to make Hawaiʻi better. You already know. Those organizing to protect the environment and sacred places, rethinking our food systems, our incarceration systems, our tourism and military-dependent economy while living pay check to pay check in one of the most expensive places in the world? They are intimately aware of what needs to change and why.
We bring together our passions for data, research, culture, and social justice to imagine a better way to have the conversation: with everyone who needs to be at the table talking about what is really happening in Hawaiʻi.
Deja Ostrowski, JD
A lawyer, mathematician, artist, and organizer, Deja combines a talent for numbers and policy with a creative acumen that helps to reframe conversations and build processes and solutions that center the complexities of human experiences. Currently a staff attorney at the Medical-Legal Partnership Hawaiʻi and Clinical Law Faculty at William S. Richardson School of Law, she has more than 10 years as an active public interest attorney in Honolulu.
Akiemi Glenn, PhD
A linguist, social science researcher, non-profit leader, and culture worker, Akiemi brings an analyst’s eye to the hidden structures that produce culture and perpetuate our society. She is the founder and executive director of the Pōpolo Project, a founding board member of Pacific Islanders in the Arts, and has spent more than 15 years as a researcher, teacher, and policy developer in indigenous language revitalization in the Pacific.