Meet the Local2030 Islands Network Team
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Celeste Connors has twenty years of experience working at the intersection of economic, environment, energy, and international development policy. Before joining Hawaii Local2030 Hub, she was CEO and co-founder of cdots development LLC, which works to build resilient infrastructure systems and services in vulnerable communities. Celeste previously served as the Director for Environment and Climate Change at the National Security Council and National Economic Council in the White House where she helped shape the Administration’s climate and energy policies, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Prior to joining the White House, Celeste served as a diplomat in Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Germany. She also held positions at the U.S. Mission to the UN, served as the Climate and Energy Advisor to the Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and worked for City of New York.
Celeste is a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center, Affiliate Faculty at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and was a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in the Energy, Resources and Environment Program. She holds an MSc in Development Studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University. Celeste has served on numerous boards including her current service on Hawaiian Electric Industries, the Global Island Partnership (GLISPA), the Institute for Sustainability and Resilience at the University of Hawaii and Icebreaker One. She previously served on the Board of America’s Service Commissions, the IUCN World Conservation Congress National Host Committee, and was a Term Member on the Council on Foreign Relations. Celeste grew up in Kailua, O‘ahu.
Contact: celeste@hawaiigreengrowth.org
Celeste Connors
Co-Lead, Local2030 Islands Network Executive Director, Hawai’i Green Growth
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Kate Brown is the Executive Director of the Global Island Partnership, a platform that enables island leaders and their supporters to take action to build resilient and sustainable island communities. Kate is a passionate advocate for islands. She is a valued and trusted international partnership and collaboration leader, with a unique ability to connect dots for issues and people. Kate has extensive experience in all island regions globally, and brings an extensive network of island leaders, blue sky thinkers and people dedicated to supporting islands.
Kate has experience working inside government, non-profits and intergovernmentally as well as a keen sense of the most important elements of the international policy setting space relevant to islands as well as what is needed for implementation to happen. A strategic thinker who is able to present clear ideas and set up the right conditions for collaboration to thrive. Kate is originally from New Zealand and lived for eight years in Apia, Samoa. Kate now resides in Washington DC with her family.
Contact: kate@globalislandpartnership.org
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Dr. Chris Hobbs is the Local2030 Islands Network Dashboard Development and Communities of Practice Facilitator. Chris facilitates the L2030IN Data for Climate Resilience Community of Practice, organizing virtual and in person meetings and engaging with island members and technical experts to facilitate peer-to-peer learning, with a focus on dashboards. Chris has a Bachelor of Science in Biosciences and a Doctorate in Biological Sciences from Canterbury Christ Church University, United Kingdom. His dissertation focused on using data to better understand endangered species and more effectively direct management for their protection. Chris is dedicated to applying a data-driven approach to sustainability and climate resilience action, with a focus on transparency and public access to data. Chris is originally from England, United Kingdom and lives on Oʻahu.
Contact: christopher@hawaiigreengrowth.org
Christopher Hobbs
Data for Climate Resilience Community of Practice Coordinator and Dashboard Developer, Local2030 Islands Network
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Jabal is a trained urban planner-cum-communications strategist. A former "Island Scholar", Jabal worked as an urban planner in his home country of Trinidad and Tobago for a number of years. Since moving on from the Ministry of Planning and Development, he has pursued a wide range of interests and possibilities outside of his comfort zone, from teaching English in Japan, to acting as the media liaison for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Now at GLISPA, he is motivated simply by a desire to make a meaningful contribution to any venture he pursues.
Contact: jabal@globalislandpartnership.org
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Samantha Happ (she/her) is the Local2030 Islands Network’s Managing Director, overseeing the Network’s strategy, engagements, and work streams. Samantha is a sustainable development practitioner with lived and working experience across the Pacific and Southeast Asia, specializing in local and community-based strategy, policy, and programming in furtherance of the Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to joining Local2030, Samantha worked on Strategic Foresight with UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific on projects related to systems transformation, inclusive futures, anticipatory risk governance, and design thinking. Prior, she worked at UNDP Headquarters in New York on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) policy, later joining the Inclusive Growth portfolio on the COVID-19 Socio-Economic Recovery in LDCs, MICs, and SIDS. Samantha holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and bachelor’s degrees in Political Science, Intercultural Studies, and Advocacy and Social Change.
Contact: samantha@hawaiigreengrowth.org
Dianne Dredge
Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Community of Practice Coordinator, Local2030 Islands Network
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Dianne Dredge is the Sustainable and Regenerative Tourism Community of Practice Coordinator for the Local2030 Islands Network. She has extensive research, education, policy and consulting experience in sustainable tourism, environmental planning, policy and community development. Dianne is a boundary spanner, creative systems thinker and community builder. She has provided advice to the European Commission and OECD in areas including digitalisation, diverse and collaborative economies and tourism policy complementarities. Dianne has held professorships in tourism and regional policy in universities in Australia, Sweden, Canada and Denmark, and is lead author on over 200 publications in sustainable and regenerative tourism. In 2019 she left higher education to create the Tourism CoLab, a globally recognised innovation lighthouse and community of practice for regenerative tourism. She is an elected member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism.
Contact: dianne@thetourismcolab.com.au
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Paula is an experienced tourism professional with a strong background in agro and community tourism management, marketing, research and event planning and coordination. She has a Master’s Degree in Tourism Management from Royal Roads University in Canada and a keen interest in sustainable development and climate change issues borne out of her love for travel and work with communities. Paula has worked with the Centre for Responsible Travel in Washington, DC; the Blue Innovation Institute in Grenada; and was an event planner for the first ever Climate Smart Exhibition in Grenada. She volunteers with the St. Patrick Environmental and Tourism Organisation which has the mandate for Leatherback Turtle Conservation in Grenada.
Contact: paula@globalislandpartnership.org
Erin Derrington
Global Energy and Water Communities of Practice Coordinator, Local2030 Islands Network
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Erin Derrington (she / they) is the Local2030 Islands Network Global Energy and Water Communities of Practice Coordinator. With a professional background in sustainable development planning and implementation, and an academic background in environmental science and law, Erin is excited to be leading efforts to build strong and substantive engagement within and across the Clean Energy and Resilience and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Communities of Practice (CoP). As the focal point for these CoPs, Ms. Derrington looks forward to supporting strategic planning and thematic content development, engaging technical partners, and leading CoP participant outreach to build robust and collaborative peer-to-peer communities anchored in knowledge exchange and technical capacity building to achieve island-driven solutions to complex sustainable development challenges.
Contact: erin@islands2030.org / erin.derrington@hawaiigreengrowth.org
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Kaimana Bingham is Hawai’i Green Growth’s Aloha + Dashboard and Partnerships Manager. Before joining Hawai’i Green Growth, Kaimana worked for the State of Hawai’i Enterprise Technology Services branch where she implemented the first State Executive Branch IT Roadmap and Dashboard. Her role at ETS transitioned to the State Portal Program Manager in which she provided guidance to the Access Hawai’i Committee Governing Board on digital government solutions. Kaimana also participated as a stakeholder for the State of Hawai’i IT Strategic Plan. She served as a panelist for the Hawai’i Virtual Digital Government Summit and as a sponsor for the ETS 2020 HACC program. Prior to working for the State, she was a consultant for CGI, administering the financial management system for State Exchanges under the Affordable Care Act in 2013.
Kaimana is a graduate from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a BS in Psychology and a double minor in Business Diversity and Business Leadership. She spent a semester abroad at Telecom ParisTech, where she specialized in Information Technology and participated in visits to the International Telecommunication Union and United Nations.
Contact: kaimana@hawaiigreengrowth.org
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In her capacity as HGG’s Operations and Strategy Director, Shelley oversees the organization’s operations, development and finances, personnel, and strategy, working closely with all members of the Hawai’i Green Growth team. Shelley’s prior experience includes outreach and capacity building as the Hawai’i Association of Watershed Partnerships’ Outreach Specialist, in addition to four years of international experience in the Mekong Basin (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar) as an analyst and writer to support a USAID climate change adaptation project; and subsequently as a Global Environmental Facility project design team leader on behalf of IUCN. She has a Bachelor’s in Biology, a Master’s in Water Resources and 20 years of professional experience working on environmental, climate change, and sustainability projects.
Contact: shelley@hawaiigreengrowth.org
Kate Brown
Co-Lead, Local2030 Islands Network Executive Director, Global Island Partnership
Jabal Hassanali
Strategy Manager, Global Island Partnership
Samantha Happ
Managing Director, Local2030 Islands Network
Kaimana Bingham
Data & innovation Director, Hawai’i Green Growth
Shelley Gustafson
Operations and Strategy Director, Hawai’i Green Growth
Paula Lewis
Partnership Manager, Global Island Partnership
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In her role as Project Specialist, Paula Moehlenkamp is working across the Pacific RISA and Local2030 Island Network teams to use the Aloha+ Dashboard – Hawai‘i's local framework to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) –as a model to determine locally and culturally appropriate climate metrics for a similar framework in one or more of the Freely Associated States (FAS) in Micronesia. The project builds regional capacity in the ability to track biophysical and social indicators of climate change impacts, management responses and adaptation goals.
Paula received her Bachelor in Environmental Sciences (2015) from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany and her Master in Oceanography (2018) from the University of Hawaiʻi. research interests include the exploration of anthropogenic impact on coastal ecosystems, conservation biology and climate change adaptation in the Pacific Region. Paula is dedicated to translating science into actionable knowledge for a variety of stakeholders in conservation and resource management as well as to integrating traditional knowledge systems and Western science to fuel sustainable solutions for the benefit of nature and people.
Contact: paula@hawaiigreengrowth.org
Paula Moehlenkamp
Project Specialist, Local2030 Islands Network