Meredith Yoro, executive director of development for the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Engineering, School of Architecture and School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), has been named a member of the Pacific Business News 40 Under 40 cohort for 2023.
Yoro, 37, joined UH Foundation in January 2020 as director of development and quickly progressed to senior director of development, in charge of fundraising for the engineering, architecture and SOEST units at UH Mānoa. She was promoted in 2022 to executive director of development with a team of five development officers as her direct reports.
As one of the UH Foundation’s top fundraisers, she was part of the team that secured a $50 million gift for ocean research from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan, the largest-ever single cash donation to any UH campus. In the past two years, she has raised more than $60 million for student scholarships, faculty and research at UH.
Yoro also has strong connections to UH Mānoa athletics, where her husband, Jacob Yoro, is a defensive coordinator for the UH football team.
She grew up in the San Juan Islands, north of Seattle in Washington state, and earned her bachelor of arts degree at Pacific University and a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University.
Yoro has served as director of development at Saint Louis School in Honolulu. Prior to that, she was director of development for the California Polytechnic State University College of Engineering and held a number of different positions at her alma mater, Pacific University.
