• Executive Director, Hawai‘i Community Lending
• Bio leads with “Housing is a human right, not a privilege for only those who can afford to pay the most.”
• AmeriCorps in Northern California: working with children of incarcerated parents
• Honolulu Habitat for Humanity: greater need for Native Hawaiians
• Hawaiian Community Assets→founded Hawai‘i Community Lending in 2014
• Winner of Hawai‘i Business’ 2024 Social Impact Entrepreneur
• In August, HCL quickly set up the Kānaka Anti-Displacement Fund to prevent displacement of kānaka maoli by preserving their stewardship and access to ʻāina (land) on Maui over the next five years

Reyna Ramolete Hayashi was born and raised in Kapālama, O‘ahu. She joined the Trust for Public Land in 2019. Prior to that she co-founded Emergent Island Economies Collective, a consulting cooperative focused on creating resilient island economies. She was a fair housing attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i and a workers’ rights attorney at Empire Justice Center (in Rochester, NY). In her free time she loves surfing, hiking, cooking, writing, and spending quality time with the people she loves. Reyna is guided by a loving, resilient community of ‘ohana, mentors, and friends, and reverence for the ea of the home that raised her. She feels humbled to work with and learn from communities and stewards who have intimate, reciprocal relationships to ‘āina. She is mother to Sebio and partner to Brent Kakesako.

Reyna’s work as a community lawyer, organizer, and facilitator is guided by her ancestors, family, friends, and her kuleana to the home that raised her, Hawai‘i. She is the Aloha ‘Āina Project Manager at the Trust for Public Land’s Hawai‘i office where she protects and conserves culturally and historically significant land and supports Native Hawaiian land stewardship. In 2017 she co-founded Emergent Island Economies Collective, a consulting cooperative whose mission is to create new systems of exchange and relationships based on ancestral island values. EIEC stewards community-driven solutions that model the world we want to live in: creating sustainable and resilient island economies and growing community organizations and social enterprises that empower us to meet our collective needs.

‍

Dr. Sean Connelly (born 1984) is a Pacific Islander American artist born, residing, and working in Honolulu, Kona, Oʻahu. Sean's multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, installation, film, design, and cartography, frequently integrating experimental methodologies. Their work delves into the interplay with the built environment, intersecting oceanic intellect and futures in contemporary practice, spanning both tangible and theoretical domains. This exploration is informed by cultural, ecological, historical, material, water, food sovereignty, and land justice themes.

‍