Laurien Nuss

Laurien Baird Hokuli'i Helfrich-Nuss, aka "Lala Nuss", born, raised and educated on O'ahu and the Island of Hawai'i, joined the City and County of Honolulu's Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency (CCSR) as the Climate Resilience and Equity Manager in 2019 and brings an impressive background in the global travel industry, grassroots organizing and community development, regenerative entrepreneurship, non-profit project management, culture and arts public programming and environmental justice advocacy. She has spent the last 11 years repurposing her global travel industry background in service to generational transformation, adaptation and healing. Lala’s focus the past 2 years has been establishing the climate resilience and equity program to coordinate actions and policies of city departments and agencies to advance procedural, distributional, structural, trans-generational, and cultural equity from a place-based, culturally-centered perspective. In the spirit of radical collaborations, Lala continues to cultivate the practice of interweaving corporate and grassroots, island and global perspectives in holistic approaches to centering equitable emergent solutions genuinely reflective of and appropriate to people and place. An advocate and practitioner, Lala is dedicated to the rehabilitation of our primary forms of true waiwai (wealth): ecological, cultural, social and spiritual wellbeing.