OUR TEAM
We are dedicated to improving the quality of life for our communities through healing-centered programs rooted in expressive arts and culture.
SIERRA DEW - Director
Sierra Dew is the Founder and Director of Wisdom Circles Oceania. She is a mother, artist, and community worker with over 20 years of experience in teaching, collaborative healing work and design. She was born on Maui and raised in her family grocery store, Mana Foods, in Pāʻia where her passion for community and health was inspired from a young age. She is especially passionate about creative youth development and cultivating hopeful futures for young people. In 2010, she began providing arts programming and mentorship for women and youth in Hawaiʻi. She noticed the lack of trauma-informed services available so she founded Wisdom Circles Oceania to help people reach their potential and create thriving communities. This organization offers healing-centered creative opportunities to support this mission.
TIARE KAʻŌLELOPONO - Story Quilt Youth Arts
Tiare Kaʻōlelopono is is a Kānaka maoli mother, grandmother, and selenophile with 15 years of experience in moon syncing, menstrual tracking and wāhine group facilitation. She has worked in areas of domestic violence prevention and as a caregiver and youth mentor in Hawaiʻi’s foster care system. She is passionate about local youth having access to their Hawaiian culture including land and healing practices to restore themselves and their ʻohana. She is dedicated to rebuilding Hale Peʻa in Hawai’i by supporting families to reclaim first menstruation ancestral rites of passage, and empowering young women through their kohopuna.
CAITLIN DUQUETTE - Maui Community Outreach, Operations Manager
Caitlin Duquette (she), multi-generational and multi-Indigenous descendant from Hāmākualoa moku on Maui, is a clinically-trained herbalist, writer, and community organizer. She's practiced community herbalism for people, animals, the land, and waters for over a decade and is the creator of Hāmākualoa Herbal Collective. Additionally, she's worked in native Hawaiian plant conservation for nearly 3 years. Community-centered care, access to holistic services, and Aloha ʻĀina are her working foundations, in addition to becoming a good ancestor.
KODA DAILY - Youth Leader
Koda is an Egyptian-Ethiopian/Filipino transgender man who was blessed to be raised and reside on Oahu. He is a musician and a lover at heart but is widely known for his presence within environmental and anti-racism activism in Hawaii. Moments after graduating from Castle High School in 2021, Koda became heavily immersed in protecting the ocean and has been committed to It ever since. He supports building restorative ecological and talk story frameworks for community and youth to engage and build healthy communities within Wisdom Circles Oceania. He hopes to support others through this role to realize their true beauty, strength and infinite potential. For the highest good of humanity.
TAIMANE MATUA - Youth Leader
Taimane Matua is a Kānaka Māoli high school student. She is an artist who is passionate about community issues in Hawaiʻi and sees this work connected to her dream of being a Marine Biologist and Art Therapist. She supports youth and community outreach and co-creative visual campaigns and artwork for our public creative action events. She states, “My dream is we are a healthy community that helps others especially children express who they are through art as well as peacefully protesting to protect our ‘aina’.
MIMA FIELD-PERKINS - Youth Leader
Mima Field-Perkins is a dedicated youth leader who aspires to become a kaiapuni teacher. Deeply connected to her ancestral roots, Mima actively engages in community organizing and arts workshops. As a descendant of Lahaina in Maui, she has been a key member of our team and fire relief efforts. Mima is a multi-talented individual committed to bridging traditional knowledge with modern understanding. She is proficient in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, hula, oli, media, writing, art, music, teaching, and research. She dreams to eventually seed her own nonprofit connecting culture, arts, and ʻāina to further contribute to cultural education and community development. Mima feels most creative in the mountains, where she draws inspiration from fern morphologies. She is passionate about aloha ʻāina issues and envisions a thriving future for her Hawaiian community.
LAULANI TEALE - Advisor
Laulani Teale is the Coordinator of Hoʻopae Peace Project. She is an indigenous peacemaker, activist, musician, teacher, artist and writer culturally trained in laʻau lapaʻau (traditional herbalism) and hoʻoponopono (traditional peace-making), who specializes in health issues related to activism and colonization. She has been a front-line activist in major kanaka struggles and serves the kanaka movement in many capacities. She holds a Master’s degree in Community Health Development and Education from the University of Hawaiʻi School of Public Health.
BILL REZENTES, Ph.D - Advisor
Dr. Rezentes is a community-based Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Koʻolaupoko, Oʻahu with over 30 years of experience. He currently provides individual and group facilitation in Hawaiian Psychology for therapists and community groups to promote culturally appropriate and relevant understanding of Indigenous Hawaiian culture and traditional Hawaiian cultural healing practices. Dr. Rezentes focuses on spiritually-based and culturally relevant training and healing in addition to bridging the real and perceived stigma associated with mental health and related healing. As the author of Ka Lama Kukui - Hawaiian Psychology: An Introduction, a valuable resource that discusses a blend of Hawaiian and western theories, values, therapies, and practices, he strives to share his ʻike with others.
LIKO MARTIN - Advisor
Liko Martin is a respected kupuna (elder) of Hawaiʻi and a renowned songwriter and traditional bard who uses music and storytelling for peace, healing, and the protection of sacred places. He is a 49-year veteran of the nonviolent movement for Kanaka rights and restoration, and one of the early forces of the "Hawaiian Renaissance" of the 1970's. He is skilled in the traditional arts of farming and land caretaking, fishing, use of herbal medicines, and peacebuilding. Learn more about Liko at likomartin.org.
ALICIA YANG - Board Member
Alicia Yang is a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist, and owner of Olanani AcuOasis. She is dedicated to personal and collective healing that reconnects communities with traditional and earth-centered practices that promote balance and holism. For 15 years, in the Bay Area, California, Alicia worked to cultivate youth-initiated and youth-led organizations for social justice, supporting young people in fighting against racism in education, the criminal justice system, violence in low-income communities of color, and creating curriculum to support healing from oppressive systems. Upon moving to Hawaiʻi in 2008, Alicia began her studies in acupuncture, while working at the Hawaiʻi State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. In addition to a Master's in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, she has a Master's in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from the University of California, Berkeley.
KRISTINA JENKINS - Board Member
Kristina Jenkins has worked in the non-profit community in Hawai‘i for 15 years, specializing in grants and fund development, strategic planning, and collaborative team building. Born and raised in Ko‘olaupoko, O‘ahu, Kristina has dedicated her career to supporting creative, community-minded organizations through her work as a consultant and non-profit administrator. In her current role as a program manager for The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i, Kristina finds way too much joy in getting a detailed budget to work out just right on a spreadsheet. She also loves gardening, drawing, spending time at home with her husband and two sons, and dancing hula.
KEALIʻIMAKAMANAʻONALANI POʻOLOA - Board Member
Kealiʻimakamanaʻonalani Shannon Parker Poʻoloa is a wahine kanaka ʻōiwi artist, advocate, social worker, healer, wife to her beloved husband ʻAkamu and mother to four keiki; her bonus child Tamateo Elijah Leomana (10), her angel baby Kamalaʻanonalaninohomālieikapō Anora Love (born sleeping 9/2016), her rainbow son Kāhilimanomanookeānuenue George Waipa (4), and her beloved little girl Kaleilehuanonākūpuna Frances Nalani (4 months). Although Kealiʻiʻs one hānau will always be Kuliʻouʻou in Maunalua, ʻOahu, she currently lives in Hilo hanakahi, on Hawaiʻi Island, and is building her farm and forever home in the uplands of Waiākea Uka on her ancestral ʻāina.
Kealiʻimakamanaʻonalani Poʻoloa is passionate about lifting up indigenous knowledge as wholeness reform and has worked for the last 10 years in the fields of cultural health programs, youth programing, ʻai pono, lāʻau lapaʻau, indigenous birth work and advocacy, and hānai waiū (breastfeeding) as revolutionary healing for the lāhui. She has also worked at the Domestic Violence Action Center (DVAC). She looks to the truth telling, life giving water cycle, her reciprocal piliina to land, and to who she is and where she comes from as her guide to hoʻi i ka wai. Through her current work with the Māpuna Lab, and the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work, she helps to remove generational, historical and current trauma of kanaka ʻōiwi and pacific islanders through institutional and systemic changes by creating curriculum for cultural trainings for state agencies, federal stakeholders, clinicians, providers, students and the community. Kealiʻi holds a bachelorʻs of Science in Social Work, and is a certified Indigenous Breastfeeding Counselor. Kealiʻi loves to draw, and always has since she could pick up a pencil. She has provided illustrations for the curriculum she developed and in other various areas.