The Coconut Marketplace Mobility Hub Plan Vision

Her mom was born in Germany and moved to Southern California at a young age whilst her dad lived his first seven years in Switzerland until his family returned to England. Their paths crossed in Houston at UT while her mother was in her medical residency in neonatology and her father was a post-doc in oncology. They ended up in the Bay Area living close to her mom’s siblings. Her parents valued education, travel, service, science, and the environment, and they instilled in their kids a love and appreciation for the world outside their home. All four siblings have actually ended up in STEM, including aerospace engineering, public health with a focus in environmental justice and health equity, clean energy and transportation, and biology with a focus in primates.

Family was key in Christina’s upbringing. Surrounded by her brother and sisters, plus a bevy of cousins, it was a tight knit group. The cousins would meet up for hikes all over the Bay Area on the weekend.

She describes her childhood home life as academically oriented. Going to college was a given. However, there were tons of physical activity.  She and her siblings got into swim team and soccer. Not only that, at around the age of seven, the girls got into competitive dancing, which sounded pretty intense and they dropped other activities as a result. It absorbed around ten hours a week, with disciplines like tap, ballet, jazz, along with technique, stretching and strengthening. Cheerleading and dance team were a part of her middle school and high school life. She also started teaching her own dance classes in high school.

In the midst of all the school activities, Christina casually dropped she was drawn to acting in a big way, which stopped me cold. She tried to do one musical a year from middle school through high school and even community theatre. It helps to explain a sense of poise in her demeanor today.

I asked if her childhood has had any bearing on how she navigates the world today and she agreed. Her parents were never about blaming others with right or wrong. It was always about looking at the bigger picture, promoting dialogue and understanding.

Growing up in nature on the weekends, camping in the summer time, and doing things like recycling and a composting bin in the backyard made her much more environmentally conscious. In a trip to her favorite, Lake Tahoe, she remembers at a young age looking at the giant boulders and seeing the lines indicating the water level drop and being shocked at the reality of climate change and California’s drought. In high school, she led an online campaign to get recycling and compost bins in the local chain coffee shop.

She went to UC Berkeley, not very from home. It was maybe one of the first times she felt own, even though was able to see family a lot. Now here comes a mouthful. She got a BS in Society and Environment, with an emphasis in Global Environmental Politics. She worked at the Oakland Zoo while in college, and lifeguarded in the summertime.

Somewhere in our conversation, Christina shared she felt the need to fight for the voiceless, which is what she called the environment. This eventually encompassed the people who are also not represented in government, which is what she considers the role of local government. You see where we are going, but not there yet?

We were nearly finished talking, when she casually dropped about studying abroad in Geneva, where her Dad was born. It was in the spring semester of her junior in college. She got an internship with a think tank, supporting the work of the World Trade Organization, helping to educate delegates in the organization’s agricultural program. Everyday, she took the bus to school and work, passing the house her father grew up in. It was an amazing experience, providing both purpose and perspective going forward.

After graduation, continuing her education was the first choice, but after getting wait listed, it was time to seek another path forward. Her older sister had joined up with the AmeriCorps VISTA program and landed a good job in Washington, DC.

I want to say a quick word about this program, because it has come up as a vehicle that has drawn a number of people to OED. VISTA is an anti-poverty program created by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 as a domestic version of our Peace Corps. The name changed, when it became part of the newly created AmeriCorps, during the Clinton administration. If you are at all interested, start by visiting their web site: https://americorps.gov/serve/americorps/americorps-vista

Christina looked into the program and was interested in climate mitigation efforts wherever she ended up landing.

She felt fortunate to secure a position at the County of Kauai in the Office of Economic Development  three months after graduation in August 2018. She worked on a greenhouse gas emissions analysis and helped coordinate community meetings and events focused on climate action with the County’s Energy and Sustainability Coordinator.

The contract ended after a year and a half and she was torn between leaving and trying to stay, wanting to continue the work she had begun when she first arrived.

Right around then COVID hit and she was offered a contract role to support communications in the Mayor’s Office after they were inundated with hundreds of emails and phone calls a day. Along with everything else related to this seemingly endless catastrophe, no one was prepared for dealing with all of the uncertainty about it, a social epidemic.

A few months later, Nalani asked if she could come back and work with her on tourism grant reporting, because a gap had developed internally, when Nalani took over the Director’s role. For around six months, she served in that dual capacity.

Then, in January 2021, she was offered full-time employment in Economic Development to support the energy and tourism programs.  Now, is as good a time any to bring up the name, Ben Sullivan. I knew him pretty well and almost daily I’d see this huge, imposing figure, riding his bicycle home. I am not sure what he didn’t do, relating to tackling issues like waste disposal, energy and transportation. The future health of this island seemed to be his domain. He was truly the epitome of ubiquitousness and a hell of a nice guy.

Ben left in May of that year to be part of the Resilience Office on Oahu. We recently spoke and we’ll be hearing from him in Kui Kaua’i. I told him his name kept coming up and it was getting annoying.

His sustainability effort was taken over by Ana Espanola, who we have spoken with already and we’ll be talking with again. Christina took on the role of Energy Coordinator, keeping her close to issues that have always mattered to her.

At this point in our conversation, what ensued was an honest conversation about finding someone on island at that time to assume her role, sometimes feeling like an interloper, taking the role away from a local person. To me, it says a great deal about character. However, she was passionate about wanting this work to continue for the island and took on the role and has been doing it ever since.

Her focus in OED is on clean energy and transportation. The first major project was overseeing a grant in the form of technical assistance to study emerging transportation technology and public electric vehicle charging locations.

Some of her work involves planning and construction contract management, overseeing clean transportation projects, because there is a lot of Federal funding available for it now, with heavy focus on EV’s, etc.

Very often, there is a project that catches my eye and that is what initially motivates me to want to speak with the various “specialists” in the office. I confess to being fascinated by the concept for the Coconut Marketplace Mobility Hub. I couldn’t wait to get there with Christina.

As luck would have it, it is definitely a passion of hers that goes beyond converting transportation to EVs. She refers to it as a multi-modal conversion, using more transit, shuttles, car share, and micromobility, which involves life style changes. More airport and area shuttles had a concerted effort when tourists began returning after COVID and the rental car fleets were depleted. While several factors led to those shuttle pilots ending, it caused attention to be shifted to a long term solution in terms of how all of us get around the island in the future, and catalyzed the many government and community plans that emphasized the desire and need for more people getting around without a car

The idea is to create a mobility hub, which goes far beyond transporting tourists around the island. It is about all of us. Grant money has been allocated for this endeavor and I am hoping we can get a bit of feedback for this story, maybe in the form of a video.

It was interesting to hear her talk about the overall mission of OED, which is not really about operations. They are the people trying to make the future changes happen now, working with other departments and community groups. Even talking with the maintenance guys about using LED’s instead of fluorescents is part of her role.

She describes the nature of many of their roles as all about change, getting people to do what they haven’t been doing. Over time, she has developed relationships throughout the County and community and it has made her job a bit easier than when she first began, as people tend to be more open to change when they trust who is introducing it, or rather, who is communicating it, in her case.

You know, storytelling is like is a painting. You begin with the first few brush strokes, uncertain what it will end up looking like. Christina is a young woman and her painting has barely begun. This is just part of her story and it has been a joy to pick out some of the colors in her life palette.