Kealoha Fox
2024 Fellow
President, Institute for Climate and Peace
Focus Areas
Dr. Kealoha Fox is president of the Institute for Climate and Peace based in the islands of Hawai’i. She applies Indigenous innovation for collaborative solutions in business, science, and policy with actions that elevate healthy people, places, and futures. She is co-author of the books Mana Lāhui Kānaka: Mai nā kūpuna kahiko mai a hiki i kēia wā and Haumea: Transforming the Health of Native Hawaiian Women and Empowering Wāhine Well-Being focusing on Indigenous resilience through a Polynesia worldview. For the last five years, Fox has helped co-convene Nā Lau A Hina– a Native Hawaiian women’s collective aimed at healing, educating, elevating, and revitalizing our connections to the physical, spiritual and emotional piling with other celebrated wāhine in business. Each year, Fox mentors dozens of young women inside and outside the academy.
Living her kuleana as a Kanaka Maoli, Fox has been trained in traditional practices and protocols such as ho’oponopono, hāhā, and lā’au lapa’au. The roles she is most proud of in her story thus far are as a mother and caregiver. A graduate of the University of Hawai’i’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, Fox is the recipient of more than 65 awards, including a 2024 Women Who Mean Business, 40 Under 40 Top Emerging Leader in 2024 by Modern Healthcare, Gates Foundation Goalkeeper, Obama Leader Asia Pacific, and a candidate for the Pritzker Environmental Genius Award. Dr. Fox has published numerous articles and editorials designing social well-being strategies with measurable impact in the Pacific.