About Dr. Nancie Caraway

Neil is married to Dr. Nancie Caraway, an award-winning author and authority on international human trafficking. At the request of the Obama Administration, Dr. Caraway currently serves as a consultant to U.S. Ambassador Luis C. de Baca in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. She also serves as a mentor at the East-West Center’s Asia-Pacific Leadership Program, guiding the research of students in human rights, political science and women’s rights in Asia.

“Hawaii Has Given Me Everything”

When Nancie Caraway arrived in Hawaii from Houston, Texas in the early l970s, she had already been working for ten years at Texaco, Inc. and Delta Airlines. Despite a full-time job, she attended night classes at the University of Houston. Each summer, she returned to the small Alabama town where she was born, to visit her beloved grandparents.

When Nancie landed in Hawaii, she brought with her working-class values of self-reliance and resourcefulness and a fierce determination to finish her education. She also brought an awareness of the limitations many face, especially the lack of opportunities for women, that she had witnessed in the South. Nancie was inspired by Hawaii’s sense of tolerance for difference and racial diversity.

Nancie worked as secretary to the resident manager of the Princess Ka‘iulani Hotel, known then as the “P.K.,” and later, as a guest relations agent in the public relations department at Sheraton Hawaii. On her lunch hour one day in the Minute Chef of the “P.K.” she noticed a small article in the Honolulu Advertiser’s “Calendar of Events” section. A “Community Leadership Training for Women” program was being offered free to women through the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The program promised women an opportunity to learn about higher education and service to the community.

Dr. Amy Agbayani, who is today director of UHM’s Office of Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity, was a coordinator of the program. She became Nancie’s mentor and life-long friend. During the training, Nancie was introduced to many of Honolulu’s professional women—judges, journalists, lawyers, professors, medical practitioners, cultural leaders—all of whom served as committed role models and resources for the women participants. Dr. Agbayani encouraged Nancie to enroll at UHM. With the help of scholarships and student loans, Nancie did enroll and earned a BA, MA and PhD in Political Science from the university. It was Dr. Agbayani who introduced Nancie to her future husband.

On the festive opening day of the 1976 Hawaii Legislature, Dr. Agbayani, with Nancie in tow, helped pass out pupus in Neil’s crowded office in the House of Representatives. “He had a mind like a steel trap, a wicked sense of humor, and had read everything,” remembers Nancie of her first meeting with Neil. As fate would have it, the following week, Nancie was assigned to interview Neil for the newsletter of the League of Women Voters, a civic organization she had just joined. The two began a relationship filled with love, joy, and mutual respect for the other’s independence of thought. They were married on Nelson Mandela’s birthday July 18, 1981, in honor of the great South African leader whom they greatly admired.

Nancie was taught more about her new home with the 1983 publication of the renowned text ‘Olelo No‘eau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings by the legendary Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui. At the Bishop museum’s celebration of this treasured book, Nancie was encouraged to do a documentary on Pukui, which received the generous support of Hawaii Public Television. Nancie’s work on this documentary gave her an opportunity to visit Pukui’s Big Island birthplace and home. This experience was a revelation and profound learning experience. It instructed her in the Hawaiian concept of onipa‘a, which informed her thinking and led to the creation of her award-winning book Segregated Sisterhood: Racism and the Politics of American Feminism published in 1991.

All that followed in Nancie’s career—her Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, her lifelong support of women’s rights, her work to end the exploitation of human slavery, her dedication to serve as a mentor to her students, and her commitment to education as a force for social change—are rooted in these first experiences in Hawaii. She has worked to leverage her academic and professional resources as lifelines to others, who, like herself, strive to give back to the community.

“Hawaii has given me everything: my husband, my education, and my community,” Nancie says. “Hawaii has made me alive to the dignity of all people and the need for wise stewardship to protect the fragile cultural and natural environment of this unique and inclusive land of Hawaii Nei.”