Kawena Elkington serves as Program Coordinator and Community Liaison for the Becoming ʻĀina: Hawaiʻi Summer Program, which explores architecture as a practice of care, reciprocity, and regeneration. In this role, she serves as a co-instructor and liaison between the program and Native Hawaiian practitioners, cultural organizations, and community-based initiatives, supporting graduate students learning about ahupuaʻa recovery through place-based instruction and embodied learning.

A Geography and Hawaiian Studies scholar from the Koʻolaupoko (Windward) region of Oʻahu. She is completing her PhD in Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UH Mānoa), where her dissertation examines ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian)-led restoration organizations in the ahupuaʻa of Heʻeia, and how they operationalize ancestral economic principles. Kawena teaches across the Department of Geography and Environment, Hawaiian Studies, and Social Sciences at UH Mānoa. As a Graduate Research Assistant with the Pōʻai Ke Aloha ʻĀina Research Lab, she also contributes to research and community events on the ancestral circular economy and water governance. Beyond the university, she has spent over a decade engaged in place-based community work across Hawaiʻi, spanning hands-on restoration, outreach, program coordination, and development management in both nonprofit and business settings.