vicky tamaru, community and opportunity builder.

I work in the space between business, government and community in Tacoma, Washington, co-designing with the humans doing the work and the communities it’s meant to serve.

Job title, this time around

Status Quo Saboteur

kuleana (Hawaiian): privilege and responsibility, held as a single idea.

Kuleana was the inheritance. Privilege and responsibility are the same thing.

As the descendant of Japanese immigrants who came to Oʻahu in the early 1900s, I grew up with kuleana. In my professional life, I noticed that’s not how organizations are driven to perform.

I’ve been lucky to work alongside and inside organizations of every kind: small business, enterprise, government, nonprofit. The same broken pattern shows up in all of them, and it often goes unnoticed because it’s rare for anyone to have sat in all of those rooms.

Relationships are the actual infrastructure of an economy. The model built to ignore that is crumbling everywhere, for the same reason: it was never built for the humans doing the work or the communities it claims to serve.

We can do this differently.

opportunity

I believe that opportunity is never self-made. It reaches each of us through countless causes, conditions and other people, and gratitude means passing it on.

Build Justly Community Consultancy

A coalition-run consultancy helping nonprofits and small businesses across King and Pierce Counties rebuild their financial, governance and relational infrastructure.

consultancy.buildjustly.org

buildJUSTLY

A nonprofit that empowers local ideas and efforts and connects the people behind them, toward a future where shared resources, human connection and collective care create lasting economic and cultural impact.

buildjustly.org

community

I believe that community is a shared commitment to each other’s humanity, to collective joy, and to the ongoing work of care. If you believe that, too, let’s co-create together.

Hello Neighbor

A small, invite-only project helping people who are isolated, tired or just starting out rebuild real community, online and in person.

hello-neighbor.org

Neighbor Beef League

We’re starting in Tacoma, where eight districts settle their friendly beef on the cornhole court. The games are the excuse. The neighbors are the point.

beef.ohhelloyou.me

The newsletter

Building with Kuleana

Notes on the hidden cost of extraction across business, government and community, and what we gain by working at the speed of relationship.

Read it on Substack