Our Board
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Sefa AinaBOARD CHAIR
The 8th of 9 children born to parents from the US (colonial) Territory of American Samoa, Sefa was a first-generation low-income college student at UCLA. As an undergraduate at UCLA, Sefa became actively engaged in the struggle to create access to education opportunities for Pacific Islander youth in Inglewood, Carson, Compton and Long Beach. This program today, PIER (Pacific Island Education and Retention), has institutional support from UCLA and has been a constant in the struggle to educate overlooked and underserved Pacific Islander youth for nearly two decades.
Sefa is currently the Associate Dean and Director of the Draper Center for Community Partnerships at Pomona College. Professionally, he has served as an academic and student-organizational advisor, as well as an instructor for Asian American Studies programs at UCLA and California State University, Fullerton. Sefa has taught courses in contemporary Pacific Islander issues, community engagement, and has done countless workshops and talks at colleges and universities throughout the country. Sefa has helped to establish leadership pipelines that allow for Pacific Islander college students to build their own résumés through internship and fellowship opportunities in Washington DC, California and Hawaii. He has utilized his expansive network to help build the capacity of the larger Asian American and Pacific Islander community. He is a lifelong educator with a commitment to creating transformative experiential learning opportunities for students. In the community, Sefa served on the advisory boards of the PIHCP (Pacific Islander Health Careers PIPELINE) Project, NHPI (Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander) Alliance for Health, Pacific Islander Cancer Control Network (PICCN) Samoan Community Advisory Board, and The AIGA (All Islands Getting Along) Foundation. Sefa is also a founding member of NPIEN (National Pacific Islander Educators Network) and the UCLA PIER Project. In September of 2010, Sefa was appointed by President Obama to the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Sefa served as the Vice-Chair of the Commission from 2010 – 2014. He has also been a Reader for the APIASF (Asian Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund), and AIGCS (American Indian Graduate Center Scholars) Gates Millennium Scholarship. Through his work on college campuses and in the larger community, Sefa has demonstrated his commitment to increasing the support and opportunities for non-traditional, marginalized, first generation students. |
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Karalee VaughnBOARD MEMBER
Karalee Mahealani Chieko Vaughn is currently the Executive Director of the Southern California Tribal Education Institute. She’s instrumentally helped Tribes and Indigenous communities develop their own education codes, education plans, policies and culturally relevant curricula. Additionally, in her current position, she has helped with the creation of a graduate fellowship for Indigenous students cultivating research geared to help resolve issues inflicting Indigenous communities. Prior to serving as the Executive Director or the Southern California Tribal Education Institute, Karalee has served as an Executive Director of an Upward Bound grant focused on helping first generation, low-income and marginalized high school students enter the higher education pipeline. In addition, she served as the Assistant Director of the San Manuel Education Department, where she helped to author the San Manuel Education code, educational policies, and helped in the creation of the San Manuel Learning Resource Center, which provided Tribal members with access to culturally relevant services such as: tutoring, academic skills building, academic counseling, and instruction of the Serrano language. Additionally, she has served as a grant administrator of Po’ina Nalu at the Native Hawaiian Student Resource Center at Honolulu Community College. Also, at UCLA,Karalee served as Director of Outreach for the Pacific Islander Education and Retention Program. She has consulted on various projects for Native Hawaiian and Indigenous agencies, non-profits and also served on various boards.
Karalee received a bachelor’s in History and Asian American Studies at UCLA. Additionally she holds a Master’s in Federal Indian Law and Policy from American Indian Studies at UCLA and a Master’s in Education, Policy and Management from Harvard. Her latest area of research includes Tribal Endowment Agreements with Higher Education Institutions and the programs, services and pipelines it creates with Tribal Communities and Higher Education Institutions. She and her partner, Christopher Duro, have three daughters, which keeps them motivated to improve access to higher education, the development of culturally relevant education and curricula, the continued efforts for Indigenous language revitalization; and the creation and production of Indigenous knowledge. |
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Kehaulani VaughnBOARD MEMBER
Kēhaulani Natsuko Vaughn is a visiting professor in Asian American Studies and the Assistant Director of the Asian American Resource Center at Pomona College. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Her educational background includes a bachelor or arts in American Studies from Occidental College and master’s degrees from UCLA in higher Education and Asian American Studies. Her current research explores Pacific Island Studies, Indigenous epistemologies, Indigenous education, and decolonial practices and pedagogies. She has taught numerous college courses including: Pacific Islander Education, Race and Ethnicity in the United States, Indigeneity in Hawai’i, Asian American Studies, Native American Studies and Research Methodology.
Before returning for her doctorate, Kēhaulani worked professionally at UCLA as an Academic Advisor for undergraduate and graduate students and also coordinated a federally-funded Student Support Services program. She has been involved with educational access, outreach, and retention over the past several years both professionally and voluntarily amongst underrepresented, first generation college students and families. She is a nationally recognized speaker and scholar on higher education and Pacific Islander education and consults for numerous organizations including the Gates Millennium Scholarship Fund, Asian Pacific American Scholarship Fund and OCA. Her passion around higher educational access especially amongst Pacific Islanders and other Indigenous communities led her to become a co-founder and current board member of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC). Working with others in EPIC, she developed and facilitated the EPIC Scholars program, which was a culturally relevant leadership development program that addressed the retention and persistence of Pacific Islander college students. Given the success of EPIC Scholars, EPIC was able to receive a grant for staff and programmatic funding that enabled the development of the Pacific Islander Leaders of Tomorrow (PILOT) program. |
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Iosefa AlofaituliBOARD MEMBER
Iosefa Alofaituli joined Opportunity Fund as Regional Director for Southern California in 2016, working to build a more inclusive economic ecosystem for all. In this role, Iosefa is helping to scale the non-profit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) to deepen its impact in Southern California by leading fund, brand and partnership development in the region. Already the nation’s largest non-profit small business lender – with over $100 million in small business loans under management – Iosefa helps to attract the capital that will quadruple Opportunity Fund’s impact by 2020.
With a background in social entrepreneurship, Iosefa previously helped launch and lead two nonprofit organizations focused on community and economic empowerment. From an innovative place-based organization creating systems change in a low-income Latino community in Orange County, to an entrepreneurship center focused on young, minority and underserved entrepreneurs, Iosefa has been a leader with a passion to back those who lack opportunities. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic where he served as an Economic Development Advisor to a community of miners and artisans. Iosefa grew up in Southern California before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, where he captained their Ivy League championship team. He’s a proud father of two boisterous boys, and he and his wife, who he met in the Peace Corps, live in the Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno. |
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Tony AhhingBOARD MEMBER
As an undergraduate at UCLA, Tony was a seminal member in founding the Pacific Islands’ Students Association (PISA), focused on community service, political activism and identifying and expanding access to higher education. After earning a Political Science degree, he served as an advisor to the PISA group while working professionally as a Student Affairs Officer for UCLA’s College of Letters and Science, counseling undergraduates and coordinating new student workshops aimed at acclimating students to the university setting and achieving academic success.
Tony was amongst the earliest group of individuals to become a Leadership Fellow of NAPALI (National Pacific American Leadership Institute) a program using culturally relevant paradigms to inform leadership development. After nearly thirteen years engaged in service work and working in Academia; and feeling that significant headway had been made in providing access to higher education, he transitioned into the private sector, believing the next step in the successful evolution and advancement of Pacific Island communities was rooted in attaining financial acumen and expertise. He became a dually licensed (insurance and securities) broker/agent with World Group Securities, now known as Transamerica Financial Services, concentrating on providing financial education and building a strong economic infrastructure for Pacific communities. Tony currently works in the employee benefits space. He fills the dual role of Regional Manager, overseeing an office that processes pension claims for the largest Taft-Hartley (Labor/Management) Multi-Employer Pension Trust Fund in the country, as well as providing account management, in his capacity as a Senior Account Executive, for various other Taft-Hartley benefit funds including health & welfare trust funds and training trusts. Tony is excited and impassioned about being an EPIC board member and integrating professional skills and knowledge acquired in the private sector to enhance and positively impact the community service work being done by EPIC. |
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Trisha Kaleo’onālani Tamashiro GrayBOARD MEMBER
Trisha Kaleo’onālani Tamashiro Gray was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. She attended The Kamehameha Schools, a private charitable educational trust endowed by the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the great-granddaughter and last direct descendant of King Kamehameha I. As a beneficiary of Princess Pauahi’s mission to improve the capability and well-being of Hawaiian children through education, Trisha is forever indebted.
Trisha attended Chapman University, majoring in Public Relations and Advertising. She began a long and magical career at The Walt Disney Company, starting in El Capitan Theater ticket sales and eventually found herself in the creative space as a network executive managing Disney Junior’s Educational Resource Group. It was in the preschool-friendly division of Disney Channels where Trisha championed social-emotional learning themes and diversity in children’s programming, and she helped bring Disney’s first Latina princess, as well as many other culturally inclusive storylines to life for young children. Pro-social messaging was also of the utmost importance at Disney Junior, where Trisha worked on nationwide pro-social campaigns for Doc McStuffins, Miles From Tomorrowland, and Sofia the First. During her time at Disney Junior, Trisha pursued a Master's Degree at the University of Southern California, graduating with honors in Applied Psychology. Currently, Trisha is a Kids and Family Content Analyst at Netflix, where she analyzes movies and television shows premiering on the streaming service for appropriateness for young children. Trisha has volunteered time with EPIC over the years as a mentor for NHPI college students. She is honored to join the board of EPIC and looking forward to contributing to her community! |
Some facts about our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Communities:
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1.2 Million
NHPI Residing in the U.S. as of 2010 |
30%
growth in NHPI owned businesses between 2002 and 2007 |
1 in 8
NHPI are veterans |