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© Wayfinder, 2024
Dr. Miki Tomita Okamoto is the Founder and CEO of Education Incubator, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering young people, adults, and communities to live with passion and purpose in service of a better world. She has worked in education for 25 years as a teacher, administrator, curriculum developer, and researcher. Born and raised on Maui, Miki graduated from Baldwin High School, earned a B.S.E. in Biosystems Engineering from University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa, and a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University.
Miki focuses her work in education on placing youth and communities at the center of transforming society’s challenges into opportunities for learning and invention, elevating the role of traditional, cultural, and place-based knowledge and practice to the forefront of a regenerative society that holds ALOHA at its core. She identifies as a descendant of Japanese settlers in Hawaiʻi, an indigenous ally, a student of traditional healers and practitioners, an entrepreneur and a maker. She has been accompanied on her journey in life by her daughter and most important teacher, Mayumi, for 15 of those years.
Miki met Wayfinder CEO Patrick when she was the education lead for Polynesian Voyaging Society, the world’s leading organization resurrecting nature-based, non-instrument navigation on the open ocean, and has been inspired by his work at Wayfinder to elevate wayfinding as an inspirational metaphor for navigating life with purpose.
