LorMona (Mona) Meredith | Managing Director
Mona is the principal owner of Malama Mai Consulting Ltd, with over 15 years of experience working in multiple roles in academia, business, community-based initiatives, nonprofit organizations and multi-sector collaborations. She specializes in partnership development, building and maintaining positive community rapport and strengthening partner relations across stakeholder groups to harness the power of collective thinking and strategic action.
As a life-long learner with so many varied interests, Mona is passionate about using creative outside-of-the-box thinking and program development to empower and elevate community, nonprofit organizations and small businesses (especially women-owned businesses) to advance their missions and projects. She has worked closely with nonprofit and community leaders, mission partners, donors, scientists, business owners, university administrators, community and cultural practitioners, educators, and conservationists. She has Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Sciences from Brigham Young University of Hawaiʻi, a Masterʻs in Public Administration and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa. Mona is a graduate of the East-West Center Asia Pacific Leadership Program Cohort 11, an alum of the Pacific Century Fellow leadership program.
Mona currently serves as the Program Manager for Sustainable Tourism Association of Hawai‘i. As the former director of operations for Pacific Islands Institute she oversaw the program operations department of a local tour operator and destination management company which provided quality in-bound travel programs for the Hawaiian Islands and Oceania/Pacific Islands (Samoa, American Samoa, Fiji and Rapa Nui); her duties included recruitment and training of locally-based tour directors, and the development of new programs to expand clientele and customer base across Oceania. Prior to this she was the executive manager for Conservation International’s Center for Oceans, managing special projects across the globe, providing programmatic and operational support, including coordinating various center initiatives and soliciting engagement with key stakeholders across multiple geographies. Through her work as project manager for the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s Promise to Pae ʻĀina (P2P) initiative, she led and engaged partnership action, leveraging resources across various sectors in a collective impact effort (local and federal government agencies, businesses, philanthropic foundations, schools, community coalitions, nonprofit and mission-aligned networks), and land-based movement to support and advance the mission of the unprecedented 2013 – 2017 Malama Honua WorldWide Voyage.
Mona comes from a large Polynesian family, and is the oldest of eight kids. She grew up in Hawai‘i, American Samoa and Samoa. A colon cancer survivor and mother of two, Mona firmly believes in the power of family, alofa (love and aloha), and positive psychology as a means of healing, personal reflection and growth.