WHO IS IRIS?

Sara Tekula, Owner & Lead Consultant

Since 2004, Sara has served as a brand development leader, strategic business and marketing consultant, and publicist for dozens of Maui and Hawaiʻi-based businesses, start-ups, and non profits, and has produced and directed dozens of successful events, including TEDxMaui (which she co-founded), The Noble Chef (for UH Foundation and Maui Culinary Academy), The Green Room and Garden of Verses (for The Merwin Conservancy) and many others. Before making Maui her home, she worked for a decade in Los Angeles and New York as a television producer, including on two Emmy-winning series: Behind the Music for VH1 and Survivor! for CBS.

Sara is passionate about storytelling and community in all its forms and is an accomplished writer and educator. Since 2011, Sara has taught undergraduate business, management, and marketing courses at University of Hawaii Maui College, as part of the Business department faculty. She also writes regularly for MauiTimes, the only independently-owned media publication left in Hawaiʻi.

A native New Yorker, Sara graduated in 1997 from the University of Southern California with a degree in psychology with a focus on behavior and learning, and since then has sought out work that allows her continued study of the connections between people, nature, and creativity. Inspired by those interests, in 2011, Sara and her husband completed an epic journey: planting native trees with communities in all 50 states, part of a two-year nationally recognized project called Plant a Wish. The couple developed, promoted and filmed the project themselves, led a successful crowdfunding campaign to make happen, and documented the journey on video and on social media.

Today, Sara is a dedicated learner and practiioner with Lonoa Honuaʻs Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, studying Hawaiʻi lifeways, language, ritual, music, hula, poetry, chant, and wahi pana (pulsing places) with Kumu Kekuhi Kealiʻikanakaʻole. Sara weaves all she learns from Hālau ʻŌhiʻa into the work she does and the spaces she nurtures.