The Founder's Story
Four arcs. One life. The Foundation that grew from all of them.
In Eleanor's own words
The Foundation did not begin with a single moment.
It began with a life — and four truths that, together, brought me to this moment of acting. The need has always been there. What changed was that I was finally in a position to answer it.
In April 2023, I founded Ohana Healthcare Partners — built on the values my parents instilled in me: the courage to go out on your own, the belief that education changes everything, and the conviction that whatever you are given, you give forward. OHP gave me the platform, the resources, and the means to build something lasting for Lānaʻi. The Foundation is what that readiness made possible.
Arc 1
Roots & Sacrifice
What was given — the debt of love
I was born on Lānaʻi, part of a generation that came into the world on the island before the hospital stopped delivering babies in the late 1980s. Growing up in a community of about 2,000 people meant I went to school with the same faces from preschool through high school graduation. There were no stoplights, no fast food — not then, not now. Life revolved around the pineapple plantation, where most families, including mine, worked steady eight-hour shifts that let us come home for dinner together each night.
My parents came from poverty in the Philippines. They worked the pineapple fields — long days, modest wages, a life that left little room for extras. They never complained. They never shared their hardships with us. In all my years growing up, I don’t believe I ever saw either of them call in sick a single day.
When the time came, my parents took out home loans — multiple times, for three children — to support our educations. My sister Emelda attended a private college on Oʻahu. My brother Eric and I went to California. Their home — the one thing they had built for themselves — became collateral for our futures.
At 17, I left Lānaʻi for Los Angeles to attend Cal State University Northridge. I received multiple scholarships that helped defray the cost of college — but they were not enough to cover everything, and most did not extend beyond the first year. I graduated cum laude in three and a half years.
"They gave us everything twice: once in what they did, and once in how they did it."
Arc 2
The Professional Mirror
What was recognized — the debt seen clearly
For more than 25 years, I worked with organizations serving individuals and families who faced the same barriers in every community I entered — low income, limited access to healthcare, and the compounding challenges of navigating a system not designed for their language or their culture. The work, in every setting, was health equity.
After the shock of Los Angeles sent me back to Hawaiʻi to get re-grounded, I taught preschool and fourth grade while earning my master’s in Counseling Psychology at Chaminade University of Honolulu. Eventually, I pursued my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology — now Palo Alto University. My doctoral dissertation, exploring Filipino Americans and their help-seeking behaviors, was awarded Dissertation of the Year.
My career took me through direct clinical service, statewide policy work with Hawaiʻi’s Department of Health, organizational leadership at Pacific Clinics — California’s largest nonprofit Medi-Cal provider for children’s services — and ultimately into systems transformation and digital health strategy. I trained over 2,000 behavioral health and education professionals. I secured millions in federal grant funding.
And in every community I served, I kept seeing the same thing: geographic isolation, limited medical infrastructure, families making impossible choices, and young people with enormous potential and not enough support to act on it.
"Kulia i ka nuʻu — strive for the heights, but never forget where you came from."
Arc 3
The Moment of Clarity
What could no longer wait — the debt called due
When my father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Lānaʻi could not provide the care our family needed. He died with dignity — but not on Lānaʻi. The island that had been his home, where he had worked the fields and raised his children and built his life, could not hold him in his final chapter.
His illness did not create this Foundation in my mind. But it started it in my heart.
My mother, Zenaida, is still on the island. She is active and healthy — in her garden every morning, tending her flowers and plants with the same quiet discipline that has defined her entire life. She is the living embodiment of everything my parents gave us. And she is, right now, exactly the person this Foundation exists to serve and protect. A woman living alone on an island with no hospital, no significant medical infrastructure, and no safety net if something changes.
Loving someone on that island — and knowing what limited access truly means when it is personal — is not an abstraction. It is the phone call I make. It is the distance I feel. It is why this Foundation cannot wait.
"Ohana Healthcare Partners gave me the means. My father's illness gave me the urgency that no professional mirror ever could."
Arc 4
My Own Ohana — Roots Planted Forward
What is now being given — the debt paid forward, endlessly
None of this journey would have been possible without my husband, Carl. He came into this story without obligation — no island roots, no Filipino heritage, no reason rooted in his own history to love what I love. And yet he does. He welcomed my father into our home during his final days and cared for him with a tenderness I will never forget. That is who Carl is — someone who shows up completely, for family that became his by choice.
Together, we are the parents of two children who fill me with more hope for the future than I can put into words. Loegan is at the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in Civil Engineering and double minoring in Data Science and Sustainable Design. Bryce is at the University of Washington, double majoring in Pre-Law and Political Science.
When my father was ill, Loegan and Bryce were in middle school. They showed up anyway. Not because they were asked, and not because it was easy. They were present at his bedside — these children who had grown up far from the island — and they helped care for him, sat with him, gave him the kind of close, tender presence that Lānaʻi itself could not provide.
Today, as young adults, they continue to care for Zenaida in ways that move me deeply. That is not something you can teach. It is something that gets planted early and grows on its own when the roots are strong enough.
"Ohana is not only who you were born to. It is who chooses to show up."
Where the Four Arcs Converge
This Foundation is the convergence of four truths.
The sacrifice of parents who mortgaged their home so their children could leave and become more. The professional life that kept returning me to the same patterns of isolation and resilience. The personal loss that moved it from my mind into my heart, and the means that Ohana Healthcare Partners gave me to finally answer the call. And the ohana I have built — and am still building — that has shown me what it means to plant roots not just in the ground, but forward into time.
"Kulia i ka nuʻu — strive for the heights. But never forget where you came from. And never stop planting for the ones who come after you."