Happy summer! This is Carlos. I’m a student with the Better Tomorrow Speaker Series, and I’m excited to announce our lineup for the fall 2025 Semester. Here is a partial list:
August 7, 2025: David Hochschild is chair of the California Energy Commission. Trained at Swarthmore and the Kennedy School, he has over twenty years of experience in energy transformation. He has been awarded the Sierra Club’s Trailblazer Award, the American Lung Association’s Clean Air Hero Award, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Million Solar Roof True Champion Award. In 2024, he was named the American Energy Society’s Person of the Year.
September 25, 2025: Writer and historian Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 20 books on walking, western history, catastrophe, feminism, and hope. A Guggenheim fellow and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Solnit is the author of Men Explain Things to Me and A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. She writes regularly for Harper’s and The Guardian. Her new collection of essays, published in May, is titled, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain.
October 30, 2025: Debbie Ngarewa-Packer is a Member of Parliament representing Te Tai Hauāuru on Aoterora’s North Island and she is a co-leader of Te Pāti Māori, or the Māori Party. As an activist, executive, and elected official, Ms. Ngarewa-Packer has devoted her career to advancing public health, protecting the environment, and upholding Māori rights under the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi.
November 6, 2025: Experts in law, policy, science, and ancestral knowledge discuss the past and future of Hawai‘i’s most precious resource in a discussion around Waiwai: Water and the Future of Hawai‘i. Featuring Kamanamaikalani Beamer, Dana Naone Hall chair at UH Mānoa and Kapua‘ala Sproat, director of Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law.
December 4, 2025: Author and entrepreneur Jane Chen is the co-founder of Embrace Global, which developed a groundbreaking infant incubator that has helped save the lives of nearly a million babies. Trained at Stanford and Harvard, Chen has been recognized as a Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum and was a recipient of the Economist Innovation Award. She is the author of Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself.
We, the students on the Better Tomorrow team, are honored to do our part to bring these powerful voices to you. We’re counting on you to show up and bring the same spirit, energy, and aloha that you’ve shown our past guests!
On a personal note, I’ll be putting in my best effort to make sure my last year at UH has the best Better Tomorrow Speaker Series events yet.
Mahalo,
Carlos Osuna
On behalf of the Better Tomorrow Team