Emerson Collective Fellows Climate Cohort 2023-2024: Millicent Barty.
By Michelle Curran
Strategic Communications, Pasifika TV
Founder of Kastom Keepers Millicent Barty says the upcoming Young Pacific Leaders (YPL) Alumni Roadshow to the United States is an opportunity to bridge the gap between traditional knowledge and global action.
“It will ensure Pacific voices not only participate in, but shape, the conversations that define our shared future,” says 34-year-old Millicent.
Representing the Solomon Islands, Millicent will join 11 other YPL for the Roadshow, which will visit New York City, Washington DC, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles from September 13-30, 2025.
The Roadshow is designed to elevate the Pacific region through YPL, the United States Government’s signature initiative to strengthen leadership and networking in the Pacific.
Throughout the U.S. visit, YPL will connect with various stakeholders to showcase what they stand for in the Pacific and highlight the potential opportunities for U.S. stakeholders across all levels of government and the private sector.
There is also a two-month virtual leadership development program, which the YPL cohort must attend leading up to the U.S. visit, looking at collaboration, advocacy, and raising awareness of the Pacific region.
With her multidisciplinary design and communications background, Millicent says her work converges at the intersection of tradition and innovation.
“I focus on creating interventions that draw on and adapt kastom knowledge/traditional oral histories for effective use and understanding,” she explains.
“I am particularly interested in sustainable development frameworks, ocean guardianship and resilience, with a focus on loss and damage and TECK (Traditional, Ecological, Cultural Knowledge).”
Millicent first participated in YPL in 2020, and in 2024, she received a YPL Small Grant, which she used to bolster the work of Kastom Keepers, founded to support disaster prone and -vulnerable communities by preserving and revitalizing traditional knowledge to strengthen disaster response, mitigation, and management.
The social entrepreneur and designer has several goals to accomplish during the Roadshow, with her priority being to cultivate solid, long-term U.S. partnerships which lead to meaningful collaboration.
“I’m looking forward to building genuine connections, fostering new relationships, and sharing our ancestral wisdom and kastom lens within the spaces we engage in,” she says.
She also hopes to deepen the understanding that disaster management is rooted in cultural resilience.
“We have to ensure our Pacific traditional knowledge systems remain central to adaptation strategies and the importance of cultural preservation and revitalization for present and future generations.”
Visit the Young Pacific Leaders website for more details on the U.S. Department of State initiative.
