SLIDE SHOW PRESENTED BY PWN Member, Professional Photographer Gabi Wright, owner of Red Bird Photography. Click here to see slide show.
NOVEMBER LUNCHEON RECAP
By Kay Lorraine, Nonprofit Executive
Our November speaker was Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng, a community advocate, author, and an educator with a Ph.D. in international comparative education from the University of Hawai‘i. Her topic was Building a Future Filled with Aloha and although Maya spent time in Indonesia while growing up she is very much a Hawai‘i girl. She appreciates the culture, the attitude and the spirit of aloha that comes with living in a melting pot. It is an appreciation that she shares with her brother, the President of the United States. While in Hawai‘i for the APEC summit earlier in the month, President Obama sat down with Maya at Ko‘olina and talked about life. “Hawai‘i is an amazing place,” noted her brother. “Every time I come here I realize that if the rest of the world were more like Hawai‘i, the world would be a better place. It truly is a place filled with aloha.”
“What does it mean, this aloha?” mused Maya. “You can feel it, but you can’t really explain it.” She thinks it is a product of layers of culture all living together that makes Hawai‘i unique. As an example, she talked of moving to New York City when she got out of school. It was exciting and different. Because of her skin tone and hair, everyone assumed that she was Puerto Rican. So she learned Spanish, danced salsa and made it, in some small way, a part of her world. And she treasures that part. It’s a layer of Maya that, like her years in Indonesia, have become a part of her. “I’ve been around a bit and each layer belongs to me,” she says. “This is true of all people in Hawai‘i – so many layers. So many ‘C’ words, like Community, Connection, Communication, Culture.”
People in Hawai‘i don’t ask for a lot. They don’t ask for favors. After living in Washington, DC for a period, it was good for Maya to come home to Hawai‘i where people are more real. In Washington people fawned over her. In Hawai‘i, they say, “Eh! You da kine? Right on!” In Washington, she rode in sleek black cars. Upon returning to Hawai‘i, she pulled up to an event in her beater, complete with dents and half-peeled stickers; the valet guy said, “Wow, I dig your car! Super Incognito!” And thus her vehicle acquired its family name, Super Incognito.
The fact that Maya’s brother is the President is incidental to what makes Maya unique. But it does occasionally provide her with some interesting opportunities for international exchange and communication. Just a few days before our PWN event, Maya had joined Michelle Obama at a luncheon for APEC leaders’ spouses at Kualoa Ranch in Ka‘a‘awa. The crowd was eclectic – eleven women and one man (the partner of Australia’s prime minister). Multiple languages were spoken, “like that old game of telephone,” reported multilingual Maya, who translated multiple conversations simultaneously. “It was very global,” she stated, “but also very appropriate to the diversity of Hawai‘i and the way we locally integrate multiple cultures into each new challenge on a daily basis. As we ate freshly-caught fish accompanied by fruits and vegetables all locally grown and raised by college interns at AMO Organic Farms in Waianae we were able to talk directly about food self-sufficiency and the importance of educating a new generation of leaders in touch with the land and their heritage. It was a good day,” she says, smiling.
Not surprisingly, education and culture are topics that resonate with Maya, who lectures on multicultural education at the University of Hawaii’s College of Education in addition to her job as an educational specialist for the East-West Center. Her anthropologist mother, Ann Dunham, was a pioneer in a man’s industry, a feminist before her time. She challenged the prevailing philosophy of the time and Maya sees that as a good thing. In Hawai‘i, everyone has a vested interest in promoting the connection between schools and the communities around them. Projects such as the AMO Organic Farms foster leadership and teach innovative thinking. Maya works constantly with the communities to get them involved in the schools. She advocates for educational exchange, global collaboration and sustainability.
“It’s good to honor our kapuna, but we must also be open to change if we are to progress. We must constantly be thinking of ourselves as agents of change.” One of the changes that Maya Soetoro-Ng has made in 2011 was publishing her first book, Ladder to the Moon. This children’s book was inspired by her mother, who used to tell her “moon baby” stories about life, love and the importance of empathy. “The moon was always a powerful connection between my mother and me,” said Maya. In fact, I named my daughter, Suhaila, because Suhaila means the glow around the moon. When I was pregnant with Suhaila, I came across boxes of books and toys that had been labeled by my mother, ‘For Maya’s Children.’ It moved me to want to share my mother’s philosophy of global interconnectedness; the idea that each person can make the world a better place if we don’t hold ourselves back.”
We were honored to have Dr. Soetoro-Ng autograph some of the books as holiday gifts after the luncheon. It is obviously the first of many such books designed to be read at night and be talked about during the day. Conversations are what Maya Soetoro-Ng hopes to inspire. “In the end, change will come from the keiki.”
Many thanks to Maya, who was a perfect speaker to round out the year’s topics. Thanks, too, to our President-Elect Mary Houghton who has been in charge of the 2011 luncheon speakers. Mary and Executive Director Carol Williams have worked hard throughout the year to bring us information that helps us to grow as women as well as professional leaders.
