Maui Food Bank launches CEO search amid leadership transition

Maui Food Bank’s next CEO will inherit a relief network moving more than 7.6 million pounds of food a year while still managing the aftershocks of the Maui wildfires. That makes this search less about filling a vacancy than about deciding who can steady funding, keep food moving, and hold together partner trust across Maui County.

The organization announced the search on May 7 and said Steve Ulene, who becomes incoming board chair on July 1, will lead the CEO search committee. Ulene is a longtime community volunteer and a former board vice chair, a sign the nonprofit is leaning on board continuity and local credibility as it picks its next top leader.

That continuity matters because Maui Food Bank has been operating in a much larger posture since Lisa Paulson arrived as CEO on August 19, 2024, amid a 65% surge in food insecurity tied to the devastating wildfires. By the winter 2025 newsletter, the organization said it was serving more than 34,000 people each month, with 40% children and youth. Its own materials say 65% of the people it serves have incomes below poverty guidelines, 37% are working households, and nearly half are single mothers.

For food recovery staff and volunteers, the operational stakes are clear. Maui Food Bank says it is the only nonprofit in Maui County that collects, warehouses, and distributes mass quantities of both perishable and nonperishable food items. It also says it works with more than 120 partner agencies shopping with it and more than 130 partner agencies with portal access, a network that depends on reliable leadership as much as donations.

The scale has already changed. Maui Food Bank said monthly food distribution rose from 250,000 pounds before the wildfires to more than 700,000 pounds afterward, including 200,000 pounds of fresh produce. A major part of that expansion has been Da Mobile Market, a program funded by a $2.1 million American Red Cross grant that was designed to serve 3,500 people per month and can distribute up to 10,000 pounds of food per deployment.

The next chief executive will also walk into a longer-term planning cycle. Maui Food Bank’s winter 2026 newsletter described a future headquarters and resiliency campus with cold storage, emergency food reserves, volunteer and partner-agency training space, and better service for rural communities. In a county where one in four children is at risk of going hungry, the search is really a test of who can lead a disaster-response food system into its next operating model.