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Advisory Board Profile

Puanani Woo

Mrs. Puanani Woo is an educator. She served on the professional staff at the Kamehameha Schools for 30 years as a teacher, registrar, counselor, and continuing education specialist from 1958 through 1988, and chose early retirement to enter the real estate profession. After a successful stint in the business in Honolulu and Hilo, she returned to teaching and at Waiakea High School in Hilo, in 1992, and retired June of 2004, devoting 12 years at this large public school.

She headed the Hawaii Chinese History Center as president from 1977-1984 and executive director from 1985-1989, and within those years focused the Center to attract and support researchers and authors, which resulted in the production of 10 of the Center's 17 major publications on the topic of the Chinese in Hawaii.

Her abiding interest in the Chinese in Hawaii stems from her Chinese mother, second generation in Hawaii, who grew up in the rural sugar plantation villages of Waiohinu and Naalehu on the island of Hawaii.