The Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture  and Design is a place of storytelling and cultural exchange, where the spaces themselves  invite reflection.

In this quiet corridor, we meet Marisa Castuera Hayase, a leader  shaped by her heritage and curiosity and now entrusted with one of the largest  philanthropic portfolios in Hawai‘i.

What I tell people about what I do is that I  get to partner deeply with community leaders that have such ingenious solutions  for community well-being and health, and that my job and privilege is to find  them, champion them and resource them.

As Vice President of Programs at the  Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Marisa is the first leader from Hawai‘i to  oversee its work across the U.S.

and Israel, directing more than $150 million a year in  grantmaking.

Even with decades of experience in philanthropy, she says taking  on this role felt like a bold step.

I think for me, it was a stretch to take on a  role where I had a position of authority and I had to make decisions in a more resolute way and  have more eyes on me frankly and I'm naturally a more private person.

So, for me it has really  highlighted where leadership intersects with personal growth and development and that we try to  rise to occasions to be of service and in doing so sometimes we have to confront our own edges.

And also, to be OK with being wrong.

I think for high achieving people, especially people  that overcome hardships, sometimes a pathway to do that is to say, I have to be right all  the time, I have to be perfect all the time, I have to never make mistakes.

And we, I  think, need to give ourselves more room and more grace for being able to make mistakes  and still seeing ourselves as successful.

Her achievements were shaped by humble  beginnings with a father born in Mexico and a mother raised in Waimānalo, who  together built a life together in California.

Tell me about your relationship with Hawaiʻi  growing up.

You grew up in California, but your family is originally from the islands.

My dad was born in Mexico, but he had  a scholarship to study in the United States.

And he studied at Cal State Long  Beach and afterward decided he wanted to be a Methodist minister.

And the very  first church they assigned him to was Waimānalo Methodist Church.

And my mom's  parents had started that church together.

My dad was the first pastor that they  ever had and that's how he met my mom.

They got married and my dad wanted to continue  his education and go to the Claremont School of Theology.

So, I was raised there.

I am half Mexican and half Okinawan.

What do you draw from those  cultures in your life now?

I draw from that the ability to navigate between  cultures and to value and respect the ability to transition between countries and languages and  ideas and people.

I think that my early interest in people's stories comes from having such a close  relationship with all four of my grandparents.

They couldn't talk to each other, because my  grandparents from Mexico only spoke Spanish, and my grandparents here in Hawaiʻi, they  only spoke English and Japanese.

And so, without someone to translate between them,  all of the richness of their experiences and their stories and all of things that they  had in common, they couldn’t really share directly with each other.

And from a young age,  I made that my job, to translate between them.

When Marisa was seven, her parents divorced.

Her grandparents left Hawai‘i to help raise her and her sister, while her mother  worked her way through nursing school.

It was really incredible for me to see my mom set  a goal for herself and to study with her and do homework together at the kitchen table and when  she graduated, I was 13 years old and I got to go and celebrate that with her.

And she worked so  hard even with my grandparents there to help her.

She worked at Wendy's and she worked long shifts  you know in fast food to pay for nursing school.

What did that mean for you, you know, 13,  and seeing your mom have that accomplishment?

I get emotional thinking about it.

I remember exactly where it was.

It was in this large pavilion in Los Angeles,  and they had a big stage and there was an orchestra.

I felt so proud and it really gave  me a sense of what it means to set a goal and work toward it and have a supportive team  around you to help you achieve that goal.

A few years later, it was Marisa’s  turn to take on new challenges, leaving California to attend  Williams College in Massachusetts.

It was a mixed blessing.

It was hard and it was  my first time really navigating something on my own.

I think it made me a stronger person.

But  it definitely intensified a fear that I had of failure and of not doing the right thing.

I  was such an achiever all my life.

And going to Williams, I was just amazed by the quality  of the students and how great they were at everything.

And I felt a little out of my depth.

I also had come from a situation where I didn't have nearly as much of the resources and  financial security.

I had to work and have a school job as part of my financial  aid package.

So, I think that was an era, too, when it felt important to hide  the ways that we were different.

And so, I wasn't necessarily sharing with everyone,  oh, my mom worked at Wendy's and we are using scholarships and loans for me to have this  experience.

And so, I felt a lot of the time really uncomfortable and out of my element and  like I was concealing really important parts of my life as problematic instead of as part of  the source of strength and the value that I have.

After Williams came work in nonprofits, and  eventually a degree in public policy from Harvard.

You go to Harvard and then hold a  series of jobs.

I'm curious to know, at what point did you feel like you were leading?

I felt like I was leading when I finally  understood that amplifying other people's stories is a form of leadership.

And that,  leadership doesn't have to be about control and about top-down decision-making.

That it  can be about cultivating spaces for people to share their stories and to work together and  find common ground across great difference, something that I've been  interested in since I was a child.

Still ahead, Marisa comes full circle, returning  to Hawaiʻi on behalf of a family that once left, and dedicating her life to service here.

That's when A Leader's Journey continues.

Waimānalo has always been part of Marisa’s story, a place her mom and grandparents called  home, where she now returns to reflect.

Walking on the beach, my husband and I do that  regularly, and we try to bring our kids along as well.

It calms us down, it puts us in  a mindset of I think the reciprocity that people talk about as such an important value  in Hawaiʻi, because we can experience if we observe this area just all of the ways that the  places around us thrive on interdependence.

And we need all of these pieces, right?

We need the  sand, we need the water, we need fresh water, we need all of the native vegetation.

And then we need to all the people to see themselves as part of that system.

So,  I love the chance to reground and reconnect.

Although she grew up in California, she says  local Hawaiʻi values shaped her upbringing.

When my grandparents moved from Hawaiʻi  to go take care of my sister and I, they brought with them so many practices,  traditions and values that I now can look back on and say I really cherish that  as a part of what they gifted me with.

Even though I didn't grow up here, I was  fortunate to be raised by Hawaiʻi people.

My grandpa kept fishing, one of his loves in life  and he built a smoker that he put on our lanai, and he built it out of an old refrigerator.

So, we had this refrigerator on our Lanai that was constantly smoking, and people would  stop by and say, there's a fire in your house, are you okay?

And we had these practices  that are normal here that over there, you know, were different.

And so, coming back  to Hawaiʻi, it just felt like so much like home, even though it wasn't a place that I was raised  in, I felt like, oh, this is what I know.

That is so interesting, this idea that you're  raised in another place, but you're raised by the people of this place.

And so those values  are really ingrained from such a young age.

Yes, yes, so after my grandpa smoked all  the fish he caught, he would wrap it in newspaper and he would pass it out to the  neighbors and to all of our friends.

And that idea of we feed our community, that  I know he practiced here in Waimānalo, he brought that to Claremont, California.

And my mom as well would always say, oh, are you going to go visit your friend?

Take  something, make sure to take something.

And not everybody else was doing that.

And  I just love now looking back on it, knowing that the idea of we are all dependent  upon each other, we share what we have.

I mean, I just love this idea that when  you move here, everything feels familiar.

Yes, yes, absolutely, and you realize,  oh, this is home.

And my mom had always said when we were kids growing up, I should  have raised you girls in Hawaiʻi.

And then we come here and I understand what she  means.

It's a kindness and a joy and a value of giving and measuring wealth by how  much you can give instead of how much have.

What I find so interesting about your  story in particular is that we talk a lot about out-migration in Hawaiʻi, right?

Families who leave Hawaiʻi for the continent, and what we lose when they  go.

And what's interesting about your family is that they left  for opportunities on the continent, and your family achieves the dream of the keiki  returning.

Tell me about that return for you.

I'm so lucky that I had a pathway  to return to Hawaiʻi.

And now, my mom lives here, too.

She moved back to  be closer to my kids, her grandchildren.

Her pathway home opened 20 years ago, when she was  asked to come from the Bay Area to help pilot a local nonprofit.

She met her husband here, started  a family and is still innovating philanthropy, guiding the Weinberg Foundation through its  first land grant of 249 acres in Mākaha.

We have worked with MA'O Farms to do a  joint ownership for a couple of years that will transition to full ownership of MAʻO  for stewarding that ʻāina and using it for food security for the community as well as housing.

And we think that over their long history, they've shown that they really know how  to build what their community needs.

And that's such a different model than just  writing a check to do that co-stewardship.

Yes, it is, and the people that really know  how to care for ʻāina and place and each other, I think, are the perfect people to be in the  seat of stewarding and making decisions about that land.

It's a new way of working for us,  and it's one that I think meets the moment, What's the most challenging thing  about being a leader for you?

For some people, taking risks and flying high  and falling down and disappointing people and having catastrophic failures is something  that just rolls off their back.

And you know, say a startup fails, you start another startup.

And that fails, and you start a another one.

And someone I talked to who regularly  works with seeking investors said, oh, people actually will invest more in you if you  fail because they know that you're closer to your next success statistically.

And some people  have that mentality naturally and I think for me, I've had to really cultivate a sense that it's  okay to fail, it's part of the learning and it makes us stronger in the long run if we can  turn it into a learning and growth opportunity.

What I appreciate about what you shared about  failure is that I think so many of us think that we have to be perfect and once we're  not, then it's all over, right?

Like you've made a meal and now you've put too much salt  and it's too late.

But life's not like that, right.

You put too much salt in life, you  can add some more sugar and make it work out, What do you tell your kids about failure?

I think my husband and I are both pretty demanding  of our kids and we could do a better job at making sure they know that failure is part of the  journey and I do tell them you know the most important thing is that you try and that when  you do feel like you haven't hit the mark that you have a safe space to come and talk about that  so that we can talk together about what else can be done.

I heard a great story about a family  where every single day the dad asked at dinner, tell me one way you failed today, and made  it a game and made it something positive and reinforced that he wanted to focus on that  because he wanted them to have at least one failure every day because it meant that they were  taking risks and doing more important thinking and innovating than they would if they were  cautious about making mistakes the whole day.

Coming up, how leading in Hawai‘i  can be both a gift and a challenge, and the advice Marisa carries  with her into every room.

Marisa Hayase’s own experience,  growing up with divorced parents, raised in part by her grandparents while her  mom worked her way through nursing school in a community who cared deeply about her family,  all shapes the way she shows up for others.

So I just really understand that we had a  lot of help and that our community had a safety net just in the way it was structured.

Nobody said, you're less than everyone else because you need help.

It was just a given  that, you know, community comes together, and everybody needs help sometimes.

And it wasn't, you know you're needy, or I only see your deficits.

So that gave me a  real appreciation that I bring to my work today, that everybody needs help sometimes, and our  communities and our systems should be designed in a way where they see your strengths.

Because  it mattered a lot to me that someone said I see your strength and I see how that you can be in the  world and do in the world and you deserve to be invested in.

So, even though we had that period  of struggle economically, we had so many people helping us.

And I just think we need to recreate  that for everyone, because not everyone has that.

She’s learned that leadership  sometimes requires shifting what we value, recognizing strength in  perspectives that others might overlook.

I'll tell a quick story about local leadership  that for me was a real aha moment for my own leadership.

I was a part of a group of funders  that was looking at how we could help more local kids apply for U.S.

Forestry jobs, because some  of these jobs were about a deep knowledge of and connection to place and there were youth from  those places that just had that in their bones, We had a group of local people that applied and  none them had an application that progressed to the next stage.

The woman that was running  the cohort of local applicants called the U.S.

government agency that was hiring and  said, can you help me understand more about why these applications didn't progress through  the system?

So, they said, if people don't score themselves high in the area of whether they're  an expert, their applications don't advance.

So, you have to have a 4 or a 5 out of 5.

She went back to them and said, how did you score yourself here?

And they  said, well, I'm not an expert.

Only kūpuna are experts.

And had the humility to say, there's  always more that I can learn, and there's always more that we need to know.

And because of that  beautiful, I think admirable local perspective, they were actually being penalized in the job  application process.

So, she had to tell them, in this case, what this means is, do you know more  than the average person on the street about this?

And that was what it took to get their  applications to the next level and to get interviews for those jobs.

And so  having the ability to step back and say, sometimes our strengths can, in other  people's eyes, be a weakness, but we know their strengths.

How do we help the system  really see us and see what we can contribute.

What's something that challenging  about leading in Hawaiʻi?

I think what's challenging about leading in  Hawaiʻi is also one of the things that's really wonderful about leading Hawaiʻi, which is that  we have such a closely knit together community and we can bring people together in one room to  look together at solutions and to collaborate.

And that's something that not every place can  do.

The difficult and challenging part of that can be that sometimes we don't have the honest  and difficult conversations that we really need in order to move the needle, change the status  quo and find a way to have those conversations instead of avoiding them, because we know that  that person's brother's cousin's auntie is teaching our kid's third grade class and that  it's better just not to rock the boat.

So, I think we need to support each other in finding  that room and that elasticity and belief in our relationships with each other and that they're  strong enough to withhold the complicated conversations that we need have.

To have a Hawaiʻi  that is home to all of us and not just some of us.

How do you push yourself to be the one to  speak first and to be one to step forward?

It's practice just like anything else that's hard.

It's practicing it regularly until it becomes more of a habit and it's interesting that you ask me  that because I was just having a conversation today with our executive team at the Foundation  about just letting them know honestly that it's something I'm working on and telling them I  might over-correct.

And you probably noticed that I'm talking first a lot more lately, and if  I over-correct, I need you to tell me that this is my goal.

My goal is to.

Share what I'm thinking  and to be more direct and to do that more often.

What's a quote or maxim that you  return to when things are tough?

I have something I do that my friend Mahina  coached us on when she was teaching a meditation practice.

And it's three long, slow, deep  breaths.

And the first one is a breath for ʻāina.

And the second is a breath for community  and the third breath is for self.

So, it calms me down.

I take the three breaths and I feel  grounded and rooted and ready for the next thing.

How often do you do that practice?

I do it every morning.

And I find that if  we can take five minutes out in the morning, it will make a world of difference for the  rest of the minutes and hours of the day.

What's the best piece of advice you ever received?

I had the opportunity to work  with a coach in Seattle who was an aikido master and I know nothing about  aikido.

And the idea was, in three days, he was gonna use aikido to help  me understand my leadership style.

And at the end of the three days, he sat me  down, and he said, the founding fathers of the United States of America stole the idea  of democracy from the Iroquois Confederacy.

They took everything from that model, except for  one thing, which was when there was a tie or an impasse or a conflict that they couldn't resolve  through democracy and consensus, they would bring in the grandmothers.

And the grandmothers were  seen as having the ability to look back and forward at the same time with generations of  health at the center of their decision making.

And then he turned to me and he said, my dear,  you have to become a grandmother before your time.

And, that was both advice and it was  a call to action.

And because I'm a more reluctant leader than some, it was advice that I  draw on a lot when I feel like I don't belong in a room or that my style of leadership  isn't the right style for the moment.

I go back to what he said to me, and I remember  that this is a type of leadership and a type of perspective that is gonna be valuable and make a  contribution in the moment and that it's time to step up and be that voice that sees other voices  and that will think about generations of kuleana.

For Marisa, becoming a grandmother before  her time means turning hardships into wisdom, grounding her leadership in care,  and keeping future generations at the center of every choice.

For A  Leader's Journey, I'm Yunji de Nies.