Kat Tracy

Kat Tracy is Director of Production and Education at Akaku Maui Community Media, where she leads both the education and production departments in service of Akaku's mission to empower the community's voice. Born and raised partly in Hawaii with Hawaiian and Chinese roots, she spent more than two decades freelancing in video production on Maui before joining Akaku, where she designed and built the organization's youth media education infrastructure from the ground up. She holds a degree in Electronics Technology Engineering from California Polytechnic State University and has worked in radio and television since 1990, with production credits on commercial and independent projects nationally and internationally.

At Akaku, she created Project YBEAM, the Youth Broadband Education and Awareness Mentoring program, a mobile journalism training program for Maui youth ages 12 to 19, and launched the Akaku Youth Media Exchange, a professional development and workforce initiative for graduates. She led Akaku's production team for the 2023 Kipuni Aloha No Maui statewide vigil broadcast - a live, collaborative effort with the Hawaiian Islands' other public access stations that won two Hometown Media Awards from the Alliance for Community Media. She serves on the ACM West Region board and presents at national community media conferences on mobile production and media education.

Her work reflects the teaching side of community media, where access is not only a channel or studio but a learning pathway - the place where Maui residents across Maui, Moloka'i, and Lana'i gain the skills, equipment, and confidence to become storytellers, documentarians, civic participants, and media makers in their own communities.