AlohaTreeAlliance.org

Pro-bono product strategy for restoring native Hawaiian forests

Hawai'i has lost most of its native forest, to cattle, to invasive species, to a century of looking away. Bringing it back is slow, unglamorous work that rarely gets funded.

Aloha Tree Alliance set out to do it anyway, and I helped launch it, pro bono, bringing product strategy to a conservation nonprofit. I treated the mission like a product: empowered teams, clear outcomes, and a roadmap a serious funder could believe in.

It worked, and it keeps growing. The Alliance earned a place in an $8 million NOAA grant and has put thousands of native trees in the ground — but what makes it run is the people: tens of thousands of volunteer hours and 300-plus kids learning to care for the land. Turns out product thinking grows trees, and the people who tend them.