Under the Weight 2022-2025

In February 2022, I joined the Hawaiʻi Good Food Alliance (HGFA) as its second employee. The organization was new, designed to serve as an administrative and fiscal backbone for large, strategic USDA and philanthropic grants supporting Hawaiʻi’s food system.

What began as administrative assistance to the Executive Director quickly became infrastructure-building. HGFA was built to collectivize funding, manage compliance, evaluate impact, and re-grant resources to organizations, farmers, and food system leaders across the state.

We were small, at first. For more than a year, we operated with only three staff, but we were ambitious as an organization. The scale, however, did not stay small for long.

We moved from managing just over a million dollars annually to roughly $7 million per year. Staffing expanded. Responsibility multiplied. Systems broke. We became the lead entity overseeing subawardees across some of the most remote regions in the country.

I built systems: financial infrastructure, HR processes, hiring protocols, compliance tracking, reporting structures. I was not the public voice, but I was the engine. One of the biggest things I learned was to get a good accountant.

It grew me rapidly. I learned how to manage nonprofit finances at scale, navigate federal compliance, structure hiring, and develop operational systems capable of handling millions in public funding.

I also began to believe deeply in my competence.

While HGFA expanded, my personal life tightened, like a python slowly squeezing more and more.

Hāmākua Harvest was struggling financially. Post-COVID funding fatigue had set in. I fought to create revenue streams and secure funders, but the landscape had changed, and I was getting worn.

At the same time, my uncle Dave, a central figure at Ahu Lani, a man who was pivotal in building the forest there, became severely ill. He had no transport, no financial resources, and no Medicaid coverage. With friends, I worked to navigate Hawaiʻi’s Medicaid system, secure hospital care, and relocate him into stable housing. It was heavy, uncertain, and emotionally draining.

Between HGFA’s RFBC application, which required overtime coordination, Hāmākua Harvest’s instability, and my uncle’s illness, all at the same time, I hit a breaking point.

My relationship fractured under the strain. I was unwell. I asked for a break but it became an ending. We continued living on the same property for months, navigating shared space while unraveling privately.

Quite plainly, I did not handle it well. But Uncle Dave did make it and is still kicking it today.

As RFBC officially launched in July 2023, HGFA grew from three staff to ten. We managed subawards across Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Pacific territories. We described it as “USDA funding the revolution”, capital flowing into communities historically excluded from federal support.

It felt unreal. The collaboration was ambitious and, at times, magical. We let our guard down.

Our first "regional" RFBC meeting, held on Oahu

Visual notetaking during our RFBC Regional Meeting held in Homer, AK

When President Trump returned to office, executive orders paused federal grant funding for review. The USDA under his administration signaled priorities aligned more closely with large-scale corporate agriculture, the opposite of the decentralized, small-scale producers our RFBC region supported.

Our funding was frozen for six months.

Six months of unknown, planning for a future that may dissolve.

It felt like living under the Sword of Damocles.

The pause threatened not just HGFA, but our subawardees, organizations in remote regions that had expanded staffing and programming based on RFBC commitments. We floated partners where we could. I worked on financial projections, advocated fiercely for subawardee payments, and prepared for worst-case scenarios. The risk planning we didn't do now became the issues at hand.

Each month of uncertainty compounded pressure. My mental health declined steadily. I had tied so much of my worth to the project’s success that its instability felt existential.

In July 2025, we were formally informed the RFBC cooperative agreement would be terminated, with two months for closeout.

I felt a wave of relief, instantaneously. I felt I could cry, a weight off my shoulders.

Relief from uncertainty. Relief from misalignment. Relief from an identity I had outgrown but been unwilling to release.

HGFA had changed during that time as well. It was larger, less agile, more internally conflicted. I had begun something nimbele, now it was institutional. That evolution was natural, but it no longer felt like mine.

The shutdown coincided with deep personal reckoning. I had grown more depressed than I had ever been. I had damaged a relationship that was very important to me. Disrespected the good things amidst it all. I had lost sight of myself beneath performance, a crescendo before what would feel like rock bottom.

Then I left in September 2025, not triumpant, but exhausted.

Professionally, HGFA revealed my capacity at scale. I can build infrastructure. I can manage millions in federal funds. I can design systems, hire teams, and lead under pressure. Personally, it revealed the danger of tying identity to production.

I saw how easily projection, the idea of who I thought I needed to become, could override internal clarity. I also saw how projection could damage not only myself, but those I cared for. I stayed longer than I should have because my ego was intertwined with the work. I confused indispensability with purpose.

HGFA showed me my strengths and my illusions.