Our Board

DARIUS "BUBS" MONSEF

Nalukai Foundation Founder
Nalukai Startup Camp Mentor and Instructor

For the past 20 years Bubs has built successful digital products and scaled web startups (sold CreativeMarket to Autodesk in 2014 / Sightbox to Johnson & Johnson in 2017).  He’s a 2x Alumni of the prestigious Bay Area tech incubator Y Combinator, and an angel investor is a handful of startups. As a Founder & CEO he has sat in every seat and done every role; designing early product & launch strategy, scaling user acquisition and handling customer support. Bubs has a passion for helping kids and has been a Make-A-Wish Hawaii Board Member for the past few years.

Born & raised on the Big Island, Bubs and his wife Kaili loved having all 3 of their children in the town they grew up in and they now split their time between Waimea and the Portland, OR area.

DAVID CLARKE

Nalukai Foundation board member
david@nalukai.org

With over 25 years of experience in schools as a teacher, coach, academic dean, assistant head of school, and college counselor, David brings a wealth of knowledge to Nalukai Academy.  Since beginning as a teacher and college counselor at the Parker School in Waimea, David has helped thousands of students successfully navigate high school and the college application process. David is a graduate of Punahou School, the University of Southern California, and Columbia University. Before returning to Hawai'i, he worked as the director of college counseling at The Winsor School in Boston, the director of college counseling and the academic dean at Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and as college counselor and English teacher at the Menlo School in Northern California. 

BLOSSOM PUALANI LINCOLN MAIELUA

Nalukai Foundation BOARD MEMBER

Pualani is from Puʻukapu, Waimea, Hawaiʻi, and fell in love with the ocean and sky as a child. She was first introduced to voyaging through Makaliʻi as a student in high school in 1999. In 2007, she sailed aboard Alingano Maisu on the Kū Holomau voyage to Satawal and Yap in Micronesia, served as apprentice navigator in 2017 on Hōkūleʻa’s final leg from Tahiti to Hawaiʻi, and in 2019 navigated Makaliʻi to Nihoa and Mokumanamana. Pualani applies her time on the ocean to the many classrooms and academic programs that she has taught in including Native Hawaiian Public Charter Schools - Hālau Kū Mana and Kanu o Ka ʻĀina, Kamakūokalani at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, I Ola Hāloa of Hawaiʻi Community College and Pālamanui, and currently as a Hawaiian Studies Teacher at Hawaiʻi Preparatory Academy. As a mother and educator, Pualani shares her passion for cultural revitalization, traditional lifestyles, and thriving communities.

AUSTON STEWART

Nalukai Foundation executive director
startup camp facilitator

Auston is a technologist and entrepreneur with a decade of software engineering, project management and team building experience at Silicon Valley firms such as Apple and Twitch Interactive. As Vice President of Engineering at FinTech startup Xpert Financial, he led the effort to deploy the first fully automated, electronic trading system approved by the SEC for the exchange of private company securities. Auston delivered major updates to Twitch’s iOS and Android clients, growing mobile viewership and propelling the company toward its $970 million acquisition by Amazon. As a mentor, it is Auston’s goal to equip young people with the analytical skills, technical ability, and audacity to meet head-on the unprecedented challenges of the 21st century.