Alex Beatty is the Chief of Urban Design for the Honolulu Department ofPlanning and Permitting, where he plays an active role in shaping the City’sfuture through contributions to zoning, development review, and projectrefinement. He has extensive experience in drafting and interpreting newzoning regulations, including those related to parking, land uses, density, andbuilding form. Alex’s work bridges community vision and practicaldevelopment, with an eye on human-scaled pedestrian design. Beyond zoningand development review, Alex is also an advocate for integrating nativeHawaiian and Polynesian introduced trees into the urban infrastructure,resulting in a City reflecting local ecology. Ask him if you want a street tree(but not if you want one removed).

Jasper Wong is a Honolulu-born artist, illustrator, curator, and community builder whose work spans art, public space, and cultural programming. His artwork has been exhibited internationally in Japan, California, France, London, Mexico, New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, Australia, and beyond. His work has been featured in publications including Communication Arts, Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Taschen’s Illustration Now, Hypebeast, Juxtapoz, Complex, Vice, Highsnobiety, and Street Art News. He has been named multiple times to Hypebeast’s HB100, recognizing 100influential figures in the industry. His clients include Hulu, NBA, Uniqlo, Versace, Microsoft, Marvel, Toyota, and Neiman Marcus. Wong is the founder of ABOVE SECOND, a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong recognized by Monocle and CNN as one of the city’s leading galleries. He is also the founder and lead director of World Wide Walls (formerly POW!WOW!), a nonprofit organization that uses contemporary art and public art to enrich communities through education, outreach, and cultural exchange. The organization has produced projects in more than 25 cities worldwide. He is also co-founder of LANA LANE STUDIOS, created to provide affordable artist studios and collaborative spaces, and founder of WEIRD FRIENDSSTUDIOS. As a Honolulu Commissioner of Culture and the Arts, Wong continues to advocate for the role of art in strengthening communities. He also teaches art classes in underserved communities. Throughout his career, Wong has focused on fostering connections through art and reframing how we think about space, both public and private. He believes walls and shared spaces can move beyond barriers to become places of possibility, collaboration, and community.

Ashley Watts has lived in the islands of Hawai’i since 2007 and has beenrunning Local I'a since 2015. She worked with the Pacific Islands RegionObserver program for 7 years as a fisheries observer and coordinator on thecommercial long line vessels out of Honolulu acting as a liason between thefisherman and NMFS for many years while learning indirectly about the localfishing industry. She is originally from a fishing and farming family in Floridaand has a B.S. in marine biology from the University of West Florida and a M.S.of Zoology from Miami University. Her focus as a master’s student wascommunity engagement in marine conservation. Through her upbringing andher experiences she has been called to lead by example- to live sustainablyand seek out sustainable organizations to contribute her time. Her experience with farmers and other local food producers and local business owners over the years has strengthen her desire to empower our local community to support local agriculture and source seafood only from local fishers. Ashley is an active participant in marine conservation and has known since she was very young that her kuleana is to have an integral role in protecting and preserving the marine world. As an owner and operator of Local Iʻa she feels empowered to get more local fish on local plates which will in turn increase economic equality within the local fishing industry and help tremendously with food security.

As President and Chairperson of PBR HAWAII, Ms. Yuen manages a variety of planning and design projects as well as the successful preparation of land usepermits, environmental assessments and impact statements, regional andlong-range land plans, and master plans. She has served on the Board ofDirectors for the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority and is actively involved in severalprofessional organizations including the Urban Land Institute for which sheco-chairs the Women’s Leadership Initiative. She is Past President of theLambda Alpha International Aloha Chapter, a land economics honor society,and currently serves on the boards of the Hawaiʻi Architectural Foundationand Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaiʻi. She has also served as the AmericanPlanning Association Hawaiʻi Chapter President. Ms. Yuen holds a Bachelor ofArts degree in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and aMaster of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Hawai‘i atMānoa. At the heart of her work is finding multilayered solutions that respectHawai‘i’s unique cultural and natural environments, while integrating client goals with community visions of what makes our island home so special.