Lua Bowman is the 2021 Hawaii Youth Poet Laureate, the first appointed in the history of Hawaii. At Punahou School, she is Senior Vice President of Punahou’s Black Student Union and takes part in a cohort in the Shanti Fellows Program. As an avid advocate in wanting to ensure the voices of students of color at her school are heard, she has participated in leadership conferences such as SDLC (Student Diversity Leadership Conference) and the 2021 Hawai’i DEI (Shanti Alliance) Conference. Lua is presently a senior at Punahou School and hopes to continue utilizing poetry as an outlet that enables Black Americans, like herself, to take charge of their image and their Black identity as a pathway to Black liberation.