Amanda founded Under My Umbrella in 2009 as a communications and events company serving Hawai’i’s community-based organizations. Over nearly two decades she has evolved the company to stay ahead of what businesses and organizations actually need, anticipating where the work is going rather than following it. Communications, marketing, and strategy remain UMU’s core, and from that foundation the company has grown to offer leadership development, facilitation, and capacity-building, all of it rooted in place and relationship.

Her gift is seeing how things connect. People, systems, ideas. She builds the trust that lets them work better together, bridging worlds that rarely meet. Corporate teams and grassroots collectives. Proven frameworks and the wisdom Hawai’i’s many communities already carry. Her instinct is always the same: find what’s already strong, and help it flourish.

That instinct has shaped everything she’s built. She helped establish an early, collective effort to strengthen Hawai’i’s local food system, and created the Taste Table pop-up that launched a generation of local chefs. Alongside her life and business partner, Chef Mark “Gooch” Noguchi, she built Pili Group and the nonprofit Chef Hui to honor Hawaiian culture, support the islands’ diverse communities of farmers, fishers, and food makers, and feed people in need.

Underlying all of it is a simple conviction. The tools for growth shouldn’t only reach those who can afford them. It’s why she’s building new ways to bring this work to the communities and nonprofits that need it most.

Above every title, Amanda’s most important role is mother to her daughters, Elee and Aki. In her free time you’ll find her in the garden, hiking with her dogs, swimming in the ocean, or cooking with the fam.