Kealoha Fox

Ho’i Hou Ka Mauli Ola: Pathways to Our Essential Nature

by Kealoha Fox, President & Senior Advisor at the Institute for Climate & Peace

Speaker Biography

Kealoha Fox applies Indigenous innovation for collaborative solutions in business, science, and policy and is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) advocate based in Hawai‘i. She is President & Senior Advisor to the Institute for Climate & Peace recognizing climate and peace as integrated collaborative fields helping to advance just and sustainable peace for thriving, cohesive communities.

Dr. Fox is a co-chair of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Climate Commission; an Obama Leader Asia Pacific with the Obama Foundation; Policy Co-Chair of The Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander Hawaiʻi COVID-19 Response, Recovery & Resilience Team; a Technical Contributor to the 5th National Climate Assessment with the U.S. Global Change Research Program; and member of the Embassy of Tribal Nations Climate Action Task Force. Her actions elevate healthy people, places, and futures with her new work entitled Kūkulu Ka Wanaʻao which uplifts mana wāhine to combat climate change. She serves on the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and Hawai‘i Budget & Policy Center, among many other community leadership roles.

Dr. Fox has published numerous articles, and editorials designing social-ecological well-being strategies with measurable impact in the Pacific. She is co-author of the books Mana Lāhui Kānaka: Mai nā kūpuna kahiko mai a hiki i kēia wā and Haumea: Transforming the Health of Native Hawaiian Women and Empowering Wāhine Well-Being focusing on Indigenous resilience through a Polynesian worldview. Her scholarship on the conceptualizations of illness and disease was published in 2022 by UNESCO in a book which honors The International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL2022-2032). A graduate of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, she is the recipient of more than 50 awards and distinctions, including being named one of the 20 leaders to follow for the next 20 years in 2022 by Hawaii Business Magazine and a 2022 candidate for the prestigious Pritzker Environmental Genius Award. Each year, Kealoha mentors dozens of young women of color inside and outside of the academy.

As a Native Hawaiian woman, Kealoha has been deeply and purposefully trained by esteemed community elders in traditional and ancient Native Hawaiian practices and protocol such as ho‘oponopono, hāhā, and lā‘au lapa‘au. More important than any accolade or achievement, the roles she is most proud of in her story thus far is as a mother, grateful daughter, and steadfast protector of the place she loves the most, Hawai‘i.