A Nikkei gosei and Uchinānchu yonsei, I was born and raised on the island of Kauaʻi. Currently based in Honolulu, I work at the Center for Oral History in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) as associate director, where I help to document and disseminate life history interviews and connect past experiences to current events, working to envision a better future for Hawaiʻi. 

I am also a PhD student in the Department of Second Language Studies at UHM. In my research, I have focused on bridging narrative, identity, and rapport building in the Japanese as a second language classroom and the use of Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) in public spaces and on social media. I am broadly interested in sociolinguistics, linguistic landscapes, and language documentation, revitalization, and reclamation efforts. I am passionate about language rights as they relate to Pidgin and Loochooan (Ryūkyūan) languages.