When Brandi Saragosa took a job as a driver for Maui Food Bank in 2019, she had no idea she’d be at the helm of the nonprofit seven years later.
She’s served in a multitude of roles over the years, and she told Aloha State Daily that her work has only begun. Maui Food Bank distributed 6.7 million pounds of food during the 2026 fiscal year, according to its impact report.
Saragosa said she feels humbled and honored to serve the residents of Maui County, and that the mission is central to her work.
“It means everything that our mission is successful,” she said. “I want to see local families be able to stay here and stay in the home they grew up in.”
Saragosa said that the landscape of food insecurity on Maui is continuously evolving, from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Maui wildfires, increased fuel prices, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program increasing administrative costs to the states.
“If anything, that has taught me that you can’t get too comfortable,” she said. “You have to be innovative. You have to be willing to grow and change and fail and make mistakes and get up from them.”
As part of that innovation and growth, Maui Food Bank is in the design phase for a new facility in Central Maui to increase storage capacity and strengthen its disaster response.
“Our commitment is to build resiliency in our infrastructure and in our distribution for [refrigerated food],” Saragosa said.
Maui Food Bank’s operations are currently fragmented across three facilities and Saragosa said it would increase efficiency to combine operations to one facility.
Community members voiced a need for space for a farmers market and a meat processing center at the new campus. Saragosa would like the campus to include a pavilion where hālaus could practice and to bring kūpuna together with keiki.
In 2023, Saragosa quickly learned that what worked for the response to Covid-19 did not work in response to the wildfires.
The food bank was accustomed to distributing staples like milk, bread and eggs alongside other groceries after the Covid-19 pandemic, but families who lost their homes didn’t have stoves to cook on or refrigerators to keep food in.
Mass distributions also didn’t work because agencies that supported Maui Food Bank were impacted in the fires. Ten agencies, including the Salvation Army Family Store & Donation Center and the Lahaina Baptist Church’s building, were destroyed in the fire. Community members stood up distribution sites in their garages and local parks to meet the need.
In response to the wildfires, Maui Food Bank stood up Da Market Lahaina in June 2024, a program that provides fresh food and household items to more than 1,400 families. The market distributed 1 million pounds of groceries to recovering West Maui residents in the 2026 fiscal year, according to the impact report.
“It was the most devastating moment but also very beautiful, because as we went through the streets and we saw the shelters that were popping up and the food hubs, you saw the community rallying together,” she said.
Saragosa said that there were moments following the Lahaina fires that she’ll never forget. She remembered families who ran into the food bank doors without slippers on because they came straight from Lahaina.
Maui Food Bank set up two mobile markets in April 2025 that Saragosa called “refrigerators on wheels.” The trucks initially went to six disaster housing sites for residents impacted by the wildfires and has since expanded to bring food assistance to isolated, rural communities, like Hāna.
“Instead of families having to find our distribution agencies, we’re taking our trucks to underserved communities,” she said. “They’re reaching people we couldn’t reach prior.”
Saragosa grew up in Hāna where she graduated from Hāna High and Elementary School and worked her first job at Aunty Sandy’s Banana Bread on Maui’s Keʻanae Peninsula, she said.
After spending seven years in the business delivery department at Costco, Saragosa gave birth to her son and left Costco to be a stay-at-home mom. Three months in, she realized it wasn’t for her, and she started looking for a new job.
She wanted to do something meaningful in her community and was used to manual labor during her time at Costco, so she applied to work as a driver at Maui Food Bank, where she quickly fell in love with the mission to end hunger in Maui County.
According to Saragosa, drivers report to the warehouse around 6:30 a.m. and spend the day delivering food to partner agencies or picking food donations up from stores. Saragosa remembers seeing kids’ faces light up when she delivered food through the Aloha Backpack Buddies, a program that provides 1,700 students in need with a backpack containing healthy meals for the weekend when school is not in session.
“I knew that people struggled to make ends meet but I didn’t know the severity,” she said. “When I was picking up and delivering that food, I saw first-hand what that food meant to families.”
Her coworkers encouraged her to apply to other roles that opened at Maui Food Bank, and Saragosa was constantly learning on the job.
As director of operations, Saragosa’s perspective expanded from the “tunnel vision” of driving and the warehouse to include food safety, vendor contracts, transportation, sourcing three million pounds of food per year and standing up new programs, she said.
When Saragosa was promoted to chief operating officer last summer, her scope expanded again to oversee agency distributions, programs and food safety.
“The COO now oversees the entire flow of food from the time we procure it, whether we purchase it or get it donated, all the way to the middle where we store, handle and transport it, all the way to the end which is where our agency partners distribute the food,” she said.
Saragosa became interim CEO in April after Lisa Paulson stepped down. She applied along with 150 other applicants for the permanent position and the board appointed Saragosa to the role of CEO in July.
Saragosa said that her many roles at Maui Food Bank informed her leadership approach and perspective as CEO to keep her team and the community they serve at the forefront of her decisions.
“It’s not about getting results done and changing systems at any cost,” she said. “We’re never going to do something at the expense of our team. We’re going to change systems and we’re going to do it for the better, but never at their expense.”
Haley Lehman can be reached at haley@alohastatedaily.com.
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