"Aloha Michele, I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I spoke with Deputy CAS Momi Kihata-Ball and we are all set with our plans for our upcoming Counselor meeting. Flight and Rental Car Reservations: We will [handle]..." Maui Complex, Hawai'i State Department of Education, April 21, 2025
The Complex
The Hawai'i State Department of Education runs the only statewide school district in the United States. It organizes its schools by Complex Areas and Complexes. The Maui Complex serves schools across the Maui Complex Area. When the Complex's school-counselor leaders convened their counselor team for a Professional Learning Community meeting, the question of what resource to put in front of those counselors was a State-level call.
The Brave Together curriculum line was on the short list. Senior leadership in the Office of the Superintendent had already been in conversation with Michele and her Hawai'i field partners about the content. The Counselor meeting offered a way to bring the curriculum to the counselors who would carry it into the schools.
The work Michele did with the Complex
In April 2025, the Maui Complex purchased the Dream Booklets as the counselor-team resource for the upcoming meeting and contracted Michele's LLC as the presenter. The Complex handled flight and car reservations, vendor onboarding through the W-9 process, and the order of Dream Booklets for the counselor cohort.
On May 8, 2025, Michele delivered the presentation to the Maui Complex counselor team. She brought the Brave Together teaching arc into the room alongside Phyllis Unebasami of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, who participated as a co-presenter from the national prevention-education side. Senior leadership from the Office of the Superintendent participated alongside the Maui counselor team and the Deputy Complex Area Superintendent.
The session was not a one-off speaking visit. Michele had moved through the Complex's vendor process. The Office of the Superintendent had reviewed the curriculum frame. The meeting was an invitation to introduce the work to the people who would use it inside Maui's schools.
The outcome
In the year since the meeting, two things happened. The Maui counselor cohort took the curriculum into their work. And the relationship with the Office of the Superintendent kept moving. By Spring 2026, senior leadership from the Office of the Superintendent was reading and signing off on the Brave Together pre and post curriculum evaluation surveys alongside the Arizona State University academic partner. The note that came back: "Looked over and those are fine. Much more polished."
The simplest read on this engagement is that a state Complex saw the curriculum, ran the process to purchase the Dream Booklets for its counselors, and stayed in the conversation about how to measure what it does. That is the credibility signal that matters in education work.
A note on framing
This page describes the engagement at the institutional level. The Hawai'i State Department of Education employees who carried the work forward did so in their professional roles. They are referenced here by their offices. Personal contact information is held private. The Complex chose the curriculum on its merits, and the merits are the story.
Where this work goes next
If you lead in a school district, a counseling team, or any setting where curriculum has to clear both an academic-credibility bar and a real-room field-implementation bar, Michele has done this work. The Brave Purpose Author Method is the path she teaches others on.
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.
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- Honolulu, HI