Community-Building, Storytelling, Hardware Integration, PRogram Management, & Photo & VIdeo Documentation
Makani was a project founded in 2006 by kiteboarders who wanted to create a new way to harness energy from the wind, with the objective of making wind energy cheaper and more accessible. They iterated through dozens of prototypes before arriving at the M600 energy kite, a rigid airframe with rotors that allowed the kite to take off and land vertically, and spun in the wind as the kite looped in crosswind flight, generating electricity.
My roles as External Communications Lead and Flight Testing Program Manager at Makani mirrored my curiosity to understand systems from the ground up and to share knowledge as rapidly as I build it. I joined the flight testing team at Makani in 2015 to develop a manufacturing execution tracking system for the kite’s hardware. In parallel, I supported getting kites ready to fly: working on the system’s fiber optic communications network, field-swapping powertrain components, and doing preflight mechanical checks.
As an artist I was drawn to work alongside Andrea Dunlap, Makani’s archivist, to use photography, videography, & storytelling to support the engineering process, team culture, and external communications. We formed a strong partnership, providing engineers with technical data from videos and using our overlapping skills in documenting*, writing, editing, and design to maintain a strong brand presence for Makani and share Makani’s milestones with the world.
As Makani’s Flight Testing Program Manager, I built relationships with the communities near our test sites including government agencies, schools, local businesses, non-profit organizations, environmental groups, and representatives from the Native Hawai'ian community. In introducing a technology company prototyping an entirely new way to harness wind power, my goal was to make sure Makani’s tech was easy to understand and to convey the passion and drive of the Makani team.
When Makani left X to become a standalone company in 2019, I became Makani’s Communications Lead and launched the media campaign announcing the world’s first offshore flight of an airborne wind energy system.
When Makani closed its doors in 2020 and Andrea and I had the opportunity to share Makani’s 14-year journey from napkin-sketch to flying offshore over the Norwegian sea in the form of a feature length film, Pulling Power From the Sky: The Story of Makani. I wrote and directed the film, which Andrea edited and narrated (in addition to capturing the bulk of the footage). Watch below.
*Images in the reel above were photographed by me for Makani
