AHA Board of Directors
President
Stacy Kaleolani Naipo, President, 2026-2027
Stacy was born and raised in Kane’ohe. She attended Kamehameha Schools from Kindergarten, and upon graduation made her way to the great city of Chicago where she spent 16 years. Stacy moved back home to Hawaii in 2004 and went back to school to fulfill her dream of becoming an archivist. She received her Masters Degree in Library and Information Science, at UH Manoa. Stacy is currently the Librarian/Archivist at the State Historic Preservation Department under DLNR, and previously was the archivist at the Kamehameha Schools for seven years.
Vice-President/President-Elect
Ani Kawada, Vice-President/President-Elect, 2026-2027/President, 2027-2028
Ani Kawada is from Honouliuli, ‘Ewa, O’ahu. She has a background in History and American Studies, and was recently awarded her MLISc from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in 2025. She is currently the Hawaiʻi Cataloger/Metadata Librarian at Hamilton Library, as part of the Kahoʻiwai Grant to help develop a Hawaiian Knowledge Organization System (HKOS). Her archival background includes working in special collections such as ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi and Kawaiahaʻo Church archives. Ani is interested in the ethical promotion and stewardship of Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-related materials, and hopes that by joining the AHA board, she will be able to contribute to building up Hawaiʻiʻs unique repositories.
Directors
Kate Larsen, Secretary, 2025-2027
Kate comes to Hawaiʻi as a transplant from the San Francisco bay area and has been proud to call Hawaiʻi home since 2021. She was awarded her MLISc from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2023 and is currently the assistant archivist at Punahou School. Kate’s archival professional background before joining Punahou School includes a wide variety of special collections including: ʻUluʻUlu the Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West, and student work with the Jean Charlot Collection. From this wide knowledge of art, architecture, film, and education she has found a professional métier in digitization and accessibility.
David Rowntree, Treasurer, 2025-2027
As the inaugural Digital Preservation Librarian at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, I am leading the library’s efforts to develop a comprehensive program to preserve and make accessible its digital collections. I organized the Digital POWRR workshop held at Hamilton Library last fall which provided digital preservation training for Hawaiian and Pacific cultural heritage professionals. Prior to this work, I was the Audiovisual Archivist at the United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, the Special Media Collections Archivist at Washington University in St. Louis, and worked as an independent archival media consultant (including for ʻUluʻUlu Archive at UH West Oʻahu). I have been active on several committees of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and am the Local Planning Committee chair for the International Association of Audiovisual and Sound Archives (IASA) conference being held in Hawaiʻi in September 2025. I earned my LIS from Simmons University in Boston.
Morgan Schmidt, Director, 2025-2027
Morgan Schmidt is an archivist at the Hawaiʻi State Archives. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, she is interested in becoming more knowledgeable about the islands’ various library and archival institutions and finding ways to better serve their needs. Through becoming a part of AHA’s board, she hopes to contribute to making AHA’s events, conferences, and other outreach initiatives even more accessible and fruitful sources of knowledge-sharing and community-building.
Anayah Tora, Director, 2026-2028
Anayah I.N. Tora is Fijian, raised in Colorado and comes to Hawaiʻi to contribute to and learn from other Pacific archivists. She is a Library and Information Science graduate student at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, pursuing a concurrent certificate in Museum Studies. She currently serves as Pu’ukū on the board of Nā Hawai’i ‘Imi Loa Hui Haumāna and works at the UH Mānoa University Archives and Manuscripts graduate assistant contributing to the Kaho’iwai Project. Her research centers around the potentiality of world making through archives, description of mana in museum and archival collections, and how the archivist’s role must change to actively contribute to the worlds they archive.
Ellen Faletti, Director, 2026-2028
Coming soon!