20 for the Next 20: Kelly Miyamura, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation

Kelly Miyamura
Program Officer, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation

Kelly Miyamura’s driving spirit is to help younger people get good educations and jobs so they can “live and thrive in Hawai‘i.”

Her role at The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation allows her to do just that: She leads the foundation’s education and job portfolios and constantly pushes for more investment in career pathways that increase local access to high quality jobs.

“What I’m most passionate about is ensuring our students know how powerful education is,” says Miyamura.

Her experience in education guides her work. She was the first statewide director of college and career pathway strategies at Hawai‘i P-20 Partnerships for Education, and she helped manage the first statewide initiative to bring teachers’ voices more often into policy discussions at the state Department of Education, Board of Education and Legislature.

At the Weinberg Foundation in 2022, Miyamura launched the Hawai‘i Workforce Funders Collaborative, which helps funders collaborate to align their work and expand their ability to improve access to quality living-wage jobs for residents, especially in underserved communities.

“We’re really trying to break the silos, not doing our own thing, but being a convener that brings different stakeholders to the table,” says Miyamura.

Chris van Bergeijk, CEO of the Kosasa Foundation, is one of those stakeholders. She says Miyamura is “really good at making people feel like they’ve been heard and that they’re part of the conversation.”

“She has this way of helping you feel like she’s in your camp” and investing in the success of others, says Bergeijk.

Miyamura also contributes to her faith community at the First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu, where she leads stewardship of the church’s 246 acres in Kāne‘ohe.

Under her guidance, the land is being transformed from what had been the Ko‘olau Golf Club into a community resource with sustainable agriculture, conservation management, and education and workforce training.

When the Weinberg Foundation looks for partners, Miyamura says, it seeks organizations that support younger people’s “sense of belonging, and their sense of agency and the healing they need.” She says many youths in underserved populations are disconnected from both education and job opportunities, and many “have adverse childhood experiences.”

“I want every young person who grows up here to realize they can live and thrive, or come back to Hawai‘i and make this place their home and continue to contribute to it.”