FACILITATOR, SPEAKER.
Kalani Souza is the Founding and current Director of the Olohana Foundation, a non-profit based on Hawaii’s Big Island since 2008. Olohana focuses on building community capacity, cohesiveness, resilience, and emergency preparedness around food, energy, water, and knowledge systems. He is an esteemed Kahu or keeper of wisdom and Hawaiian Elder who advocates for the weaving of traditional wisdom and cultural values with modern science, knowledge, and technology. Recognized locally, nationally, and internationally, he is a renowned practitioner of aloha and cross-cultural facilitator of Hawaiian spirituality. He is a mentor and resource who has lectured extensively on social justice through conflict resolution at the Spark Matsunaga Center for Peace and at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. His native roots allow him a unique perspective of the collision of two worlds: one steeped in traditional culture and the other a juggernaut of new morality and changing economic and political persuasion. He serves as a cultural competency consultant for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Services Center of the U.S. Department of Commerce and a Coastal Community Resilience Trainer with FEMA Consortium member, the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at the University of Hawaii, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Kalani was awarded the Aloha Global Ku Award at the Hawaii Global Breadfruit in 2016 Summit for his advocacy of low glycemic, gluten free, and high plant protein breadfruit to fight global diabetes, obesity, heart, and renal disease. Oceania leads the world with those health scourges.