I grew up in South Kona on my grandmother's coffee farm in Captain Cook. Out here, you learn early that hard work is not optional, that community is everything, and that you take care of your own. I found my way through dance, training with Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and San Francisco Ballet. I won the title of Miss Hawaii in 2015, and in 2020, at 25, I became the first woman, the first Native Hawaiian, and the first person actually born and raised in HD-5 to represent it.

Before the Capitol, I led an organization standing with survivors of sex trafficking every day. That work taught me something I carry into every vote: the people most affected by policy are almost never in the room when it gets made. Now I work each day to change that.

When I walk our district, my kūpuna walk with me. I carry their voices, their stories, and their hopes into the halls of the state Capitol. That is not something I take lightly. It is the reason I show up.

Today, I am raising my daughter, Ualani, in the same South Kona soil and values that raised me. She is my north star. Every bill I fight for, every session I show up to, every vote I cast, I am thinking about the Hawaiʻi she and all of our keiki will inherit.

I know what it feels like to be left out. That is why I fight to make sure no one else has to feel that way.