Kaʻeo Duarte, Ph.D.
Vice President of Community Engagement and Resources, Kamehameha Schools
Dr. Kaʻeo Duarte was born and raised in Kona, Hawaii on a family farm that raised coffee, macadamia nuts and livestock. Growing up hunting, fishing, ranching, and farming, the land had a significant impact on Kaʻeo. It cultivated his closeness to the ʻāina and the importance of community. He later moved to Oʻahu and attended St. Louis High School. In high school, his tūtū and teachers were driving influences on his life. A math teacher helped direct Kaʻeo to see the power of math as a discipline and as a language, while a history teacher encouraged him to look at issues beyond Hawaii and have a global outlook on life. These educators encouraged him and his fellow classmates to think beyond textbooks, to real life community issues and how civic engagement can act as solutions to problem solving. This encouragement to think bigger caused Kaʻeo to look at attending universities outside of where he was raised.
While his family did not have the money to send him to college at the time, he was admitted to Princeton University and granted a full ride scholarship, which enabled him to attend after graduating high school. While there, he became involved in Civil Engineering (and minored in Geological Engineering) due to his interest in water and environmental science from high school and childhood. During this time, he was a co-founder of a Native American and Hawaiian club at Princeton which engaged in indigenous issues. Following graduation from Princeton, Kaʻeo took a year off to teach in Japan, and then returned stateside to work at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). While at the USGS, his mentor was a Native Hawaiian scientist and one of the early Native Hawaiian Ph.D.s in the sciences. He encouraged Kaʻeo to continue in academia and pursue graduate education. Deciding to go back to school, Kaʻeo attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his Master’s and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, focusing on hydrology and the management and socio-economic facets of water resources.
Ka’eo returned to Hawaii with his doctorate and worked at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, focusing on bridging indigenous knowledge to resource management and engineering. His research specialty was on groundwater resources, eco-hydrology, water management, and dynamics of traditional engineering systems like loko iʻa and loʻi. While conducting research on Kamehameha Schools’ land, he became involved in their work and transitioned over to the Kamehameha School (KS) system, where he currently is the Vice President of Community Engagement and Resources. He has worn numerous hats while at KS, overseeing water management, agricultural planning, management of large, diverse ʻāina portfolios, and community development and engagement. He is passionate about finding the intersection of ʻāina development and management, sustainability, education, socio-economics, and indigenous worldview and systems. His engineering background has enhanced his work at KS, giving him the technical knowledge and “systems thinking” to understand how to engage with complex issues and drive towards finding solutions.
Kaʻeo’s life philosophy is rooted in the ʻōlelo noʻeau, Ma ka hana ka ʻike – “knowledge is found in the doing of things.” For him, engineers are people who apply science to solve problems. But this requires taking action, the willingness to experience failure, and genuine collaboration with others. Plans don’t solve problems – people do. Kaʻeo encourages engineers not to underestimate the power and importance of our ability to collaborate and communicate with others. His advice to young engineers is to develop their interpersonal skillset; how to listen to and voice other perspectives, so that together we can improve our communities and world.