"Thank you for sharing with our school community this afternoon as part of our HBA ReFocus day." Tony Traughber, Hawai'i Baptist Academy, January 5, 2026
The organization
Hawai'i Baptist Academy is a K-12 Christian school in Honolulu, serving about 1,100 students from preschool through twelfth grade on its O'ahu campus. Identity formation runs as a deliberate thread through the academic year, including a dedicated ReFocus day designed to bring the whole school community into a posture of reflection, faith, and renewal. HBA's leadership team wanted that day to land at depth, with content the school could return to and use in professional development long after the speakers left the stage.
The engagement
The relationship with HBA has run for several years and is ongoing. It has grown from single speaking invitations into a partnership that reaches students, parents, and the full faculty and staff.
Christian Emphasis Week. Michele has spoken at HBA's Christian Emphasis Week multiple times, leading assemblies for the secondary school. The Releasing Generations team has also carried school assemblies for both high school and middle school students.
Parent workshops. Michele has led several workshops for middle school parents, giving families the language to talk with their children about identity, worth, and the pressures their kids are actually carrying.
The Brave & Beautiful pilot group. Michele led a pilot group of secondary-aged girls, middle school and high school together, meeting during lunch periods over several weeks. The group worked through the entire set of Brave & Beautiful volumes. It gave the material a real classroom test with the exact readers it was written for, and it gave the girls a weekly room of their own inside the school day.
ReFocus day, January 5, 2026. Michele and her teaching partner Joshua Kaina spoke into the HBA school community as part of ReFocus day, the school's annual reset for faculty, staff, and students around their shared faith identity. The content drew from Michele's Brave Together and Brave & Bold curriculum work, the Explicit Movement teaching arc on identity, value, and integrity, and the testimony-bearing voice that runs underneath the work she co-authors with her husband, Rob Okimura. The room received it.
Within hours, the school's digital media coordinator wrote asking whether Michele and Joshua would release the slides so the school could use them inside HBA for ongoing professional development with faculty and staff. Tony Traughber from the HBA team confirmed in writing that the content would be used "in house only for professional development reference." Michele and Joshua said yes.
Full K-12 teacher training, January 2026. Michele and the Releasing Generations team led training for HBA's entire teaching staff, about 150 people across every grade from preschool through twelfth. It is the widest single delivery of the work inside the school to date, and it put the same framework in front of every adult a student meets on campus.
In the months that followed, the relationship widened again. By June 2026, three members of HBA's senior team, Emmett Winters, George Honzaki, and Danford Chang, committed to writing personal endorsements of Explicit Movement for Michele's launch materials. Emmett wrote back the day after Michele asked: "Yes, I will get that done by the end of next week if that is ok. About how long were you thinking? Want to make sure it fits well with your advertisement." Danford wrote on the same thread: "I can do this soon. It will be so easy to write. Thank you for the information and target."
The outcome
The most honest measure of a school-community engagement is whether the institution wants the content to stay. HBA asked for the slides for ongoing professional development the same day. It handed over its entire faculty for a full training day. Its leadership offered endorsements the following season. That sequence does not happen unless the work resonated with the room and with the people responsible for the school's formation work.
For Michele, the HBA partnership confirmed that the Brave material reaches into faith-rooted school communities with the same warmth and depth it carries into the women's-ministry rooms and the youth-and-parent conference spaces where it originated. She is honored to work with HBA, and the partnership continues.
Where this work goes next
If you lead a school, faith community, or family team and you want a speaker who treats identity and value as inside work, Michele's Brave Purpose Author Method walks the same path she walked with HBA. Start with a conversation.
Work with Michele.
If you lead a school, church, or organization and want to bring this kind of work to your community, please reach out. Michele will follow up with you personally.
- Based in
- Honolulu, HI