Miwa Tamanaha’s ancestors first came to Hawaiʻi from Okinawa in the late 1800s to work sugar plantations; she is the fifth generation of her family to call Hawai’i home.
Miwa is the Co-CEO of Hawai’i Investment Ready, a social impact investing intermediary committed to building a just, place-based island economy for Hawaiʻi and its people.
Miwa has worked in environmental justice and community-based economic development initiatives in communities and ecologies from nearshore fisheries in Baja California to parklands in Tanzania, including as the Executive Director of KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance. Prior to HIR, Miwa served for a decade as co-founder and co-leader of Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo (KUA), facilitating networks of rural Hawaiian fishers, farmers and families. She continues to serve as a member of the Limu Hui at KUA, a network of seaweed gatherers and growers which she helped to establish in 2014.
An experienced community organizer, network weaver, and organization builder, Miwa is passionate about “the technology of community” — and how our relationships with our places and with each other can make for a better world. She holds gratitude to her many community teachers, including Aunty Puanani Burgess and Uncle Henry Chang Wo, Jr. She considers herself a “recovering economist” — holding undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics from the University of Southern California.
She is also a proud partner, mama, friend, descendant, and aunty.