Our Team
Abbey Seitz
Director of Transportation Equity
Abbey is Hawaiʻi Appleseed's Director of Transportation Equity. In this role, she advocates for transportation and land use policy that improves residents’ access to safe and affordable public transit services, as well as walking and biking infrastructure.
Before joining Appleseed, Abbey worked as a community and urban planner at Planning for Community LLC, a consultancy firm which she founded, and previous to that, SSFM International. Abbey holds a bachelor's in architecture from the University of Minnesota and a master’s in urban and regional planning from the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa.
Arjuna Heim
Senior Policy Analyst, Affordable Housing
Arjuna is Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s Senior Policy Analyst for Affordable Housing. Arjuna is pursuing her master’s in urban planning at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has contributed research to to several affordable housing studies, including the ALOHA Homes study, and the Maui County Comprehensive Affordable Housing Plan. In her role as a enior policy analyst and researcher, she works to find equitable solutions to ensure all Hawaiʻi residents can access safe, stable housing.
Aura Reyes
Affordable Housing Specialist
Aura is an affordable housing specialist with Hawaiʻi Appleseed, where she spends her time educating and advocating for affordable housing in Hawaiʻi from the perspective of someone with lived experience of housing insecurity and houselessness. In 2018, Aura and other houseless community leaders organized the creation of Ka Poʻe O Kakaʻako (KPOK), forging relationships with residents and local businesses to create houseless-led initiatives. Aura is currently the chair of the Awareness & Communications Committee for Partners In Care, Oʻahu, as well as an active member of the Hawaiʻi Housing Affordability Coalition.
Christy MacPherson
Director of Community Engagement
Christy is a community organizer, licensed clinical social worker and field instructor for the University of Hawaiʻi Thompson School of Social Work & Public Health. In her role as Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s director of community engagement, she works to cultivate Appleseed’s connections with the grassroots from which the best public policy originates.
Christy is the former executive director of Faith Action for Community Equity, a grassroots, interfaith social justice organization, and was program manager for Family Promise of Hawaiʻi, which serves homeless families with children. Her other social work experiences deal primarily with the areas of substance abuse and mental health. She received her education from McKinley High School, Pacific University in Oregon and the University of Hawaiʻi.
Connie Choy
Director of Development
Connie serves as the lead on Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s fund development efforts. She previously worked at Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York City, where she was a writer on their Philanthropic Communications team.
Connie was born and raised on Oʻahu and graduated from Moanalua High School. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a master’s degree in communication management from the University of Southern California.
Daniela Spoto
Director of Food Equity
Daniela is Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s Director of Food Equity. In this role, she advocates for access to healthy food through programs like SNAP, child nutrition and senior nutrition programs. For the past 10 years, Daniela has been working on health issues and food system change in Hawaiʻi.
Before joining Appleseed in 2018, she led various large-scale federal and state programs, including the Hawaiʻi Department of Health’s SNAP-Ed program, and a City and County of Honolulu initiative to curb underage drinking. She holds a master’s in public health from the University of Hawaiʻi and a bachelor’s in nutrition, kinesiology, and biology from San Diego State University.
Devin Thomas
Senior Policy Analyst, Taxes & Budget
Devin is particularly interested in researching how the dire housing crisis in Hawaiʻi can be alleviated, and this focus informs his work with the Hawaiʻi Budget and Policy Center. Devin obtained his master’s degree in international relations at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote his dissertation on the motivations of the United States in regard to its interactions with Venezuela.
Having grown up in Hawaiʻi, Devin is ardently committed to giving back to the local community by researching and promoting policies that combat economic and racial injustices.
Gavin Thornton
Executive Director
Gavin joined Hawaiʻi Appleseed in 2012. He became Co-Executive Director in 2016, and Executive Director in 2019. Gavin began his career in the AmeriCorps program in Kona, Hawaiʻi in 2002. Since that time, Gavin’s work has focused on trying to ensure that low-income people have the basic resources they need to build a safe, stable foundation for a successful life.
Gavin serves on the board of Hawaiian Community Assets and is an Omidyar Fellow. He has previously served on the boards of the HMSA Foundation, PHOCUSED, Partners in Care, the Young Lawyers Division of the Hawaiʻi State Bar Association, the Hawaiʻi District Court Rules Committee, and the Board of TeamChild, an organization that assists youth at risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system. For his work in subsidized housing, Gavin was awarded the National Housing Law Project’s annual Housing Justice Award. He is a 2002 graduate of the University Of Virginia School Of Law.
Jordan Smith
Senior Policy Analyst, Food Equity
Jordan is Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s Senior Policy Analyst for Food Equity. In this role, she advances policy and systems change that ensures all of Hawaiʻi’s people, especially those most vulnerable and systemically marginalized, have sufficient resources to access healthy food. Through the development of impact-oriented, data-driven research and policy recommendations on food security issues informed by the people we serve, she strives to improve health and decrease health disparities and social inequities.
Most recently, Jordan led state and county level policy, systems, and environmental change initiatives to increase opportunities for healthy eating and physical activity for young children ages birth through five at the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health.
An alumna of Georgetown University and a master of public health candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Jordan strives to bridge the gap between theory and practice to advocate for economic justice for and with Hawaiʻi’s people.
Rein Terrado
Community Engagement Specialist, Food Equity
Rein is Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s Community Engagement Specialist for Food Equity. In this role, she builds, maintains, and strengthens relationships with community leaders and people in the food security space with targeted focus on organizing at the state and local levels to advance Appleseed initiatives and policy priorities that impact the people of Hawaiʻi.
Before joining Appleseed, Rein worked as a disability rights outreach advocate for the unserved and underserved population across Hawaiʻi. She also worked as a parent consultant to help families and schools understand the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and how to use it to benefit children with all disabilities. She is a voting member of the Hawaiʻi State Council on Developmental Disabilities (DD Council) and the Hawaiʻi Early Intervention Coordinating Council (HEICC). Rein has educational background in journalism, communication management, and theology and divinity. She was born and raised in the Philippines, and has called Hawaiʻi home since 2007. Rein is passionate about issues impacting the unserved and underserved communities, immigrant populations, and individuals with disabilities in Hawaiʻi, food access and security included.
Rosanna Rombawa
Community Engagement Specialist, Affordable Housing
Rosanna holds her license and master’s in social work from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) where she led policy and implementation research for the UHM Dept. of Social Work and the Hawaiʻi State Dept. of Human Services, assessing commercial sexual exploitation, severely mentally ill houselessness, and Cultural Humility/Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
She was born of the Kona District on Oʻahu to the Kapālama ahupuaʻa, and raised as a Special Forces Army Brat across the U.S., until returning to assist in the full-tim,e end-of-life care for her Tutu while pursuing her B.A. in social sciences from Hawaiʻi Pacific University and working multiple jobs. She’s worked in sales, housekeeping, loan processing, event coordinating, fundraising, grant writing, and substance misuse counseling for adjudicated youth, while also serving a nonprofit for Native Americans in Hawaiʻi, Oʻahu Intertribal Council.
She is Kanaka ʻOiwi, Jiwere Nút’atchi, and Rarámurí. She is a wife, mother of two, and daughter of a combat veteran. Her interests include addressing the intergenerational cycles of trauma, poverty, mental illness, and substance misuse in her family and community by integrating indigenous values of health and healing in her life and work.
Susan Le
Housing Coalition Coordinator
Susan serves as the Coalition Coordinator for the Hawaiʻi Housing Affordability Coalition (HiHAC). In her role, she focuses on advancing the coalition’s mission of creating a Hawaiʻi where everyone has access to a safe, healthy, and affordable home. To strengthen the coalition’s collective efforts, she focuses on educating members on local housing issues and policy solutions, developing effective advocacy strategies, and fostering relationships between key housing stakeholders.
Susan brings a diverse background to her role. With previous experience as a program manager and AmeriCorps Vista at Hawaiʻi Habitat for Humanity, Susan transitioned from a career in process improvement within the aerospace and biomedical engineering field. Her professional experience enables her to approach housing advocacy work through an analytical and problem-solving lens.
Will Caron
Director of Communications
As the communications director at Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice, Will oversees the development of the communications tools, media and messaging the nonprofit uses to advance public policy that puts Hawaiʻi’s people first.
Will was born and raised on Oʻahu and graduated from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) in 2012. Will has worked in professional media since 2008, beginning with editorial positions at Ka Leo O Hawaiʻi, the college newspaper at UHM. After graduating, Will worked as a writer and editor at The Honolulu Weekly, The Hawaii Independent and Summit before joining Hawaiʻi Appleseed in 2018.
Will is a founding board member of Young Progressives Demanding Action (YPDA) and a graduate of Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action’s Kuleana Academy. He has been involved in legislative advocacy since 2017, when he brought YPDA into the Hawaiʻi Tax Fairness coalition to help secure a state-level earned income tax credit in Hawaiʻi.
Will White
Deputy Director
Will is an experienced advocate, community organizer, and all-around policy wonk, who has dedicated his professional career to advancing equitable public policy for communities across the United States. A graduate of Kamehameha Schools and proud son of Kalihi Valley, Will spent the last 20 years on the U.S. continent working as a community organizer, policy advocate (and sometimes nightclub doorman) in both New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area.
For seven years, Will served as the Senior Director of Policy and Government Affairs at United Way Bay Area, where he worked to increase the minimum wage, improve access to healthcare for undocumented immigrants, and expand tax credits for working families. Having returned home in 2021, Will has had the opportunity to serve in the Hawaiʻi State Governor’s Office and the State Department of Budget and Finance before joining Hawai’i Appleseed. Will holds a bachelor’s degree in history from New York University and a master’s in urban policy analysis and management from The New School.