Keesha Morikei Booth

Keesha Booth (she/her) is a proud Pasifika woman of Papua New Guinean and Australian heritage, a mother to Zion and Zan, and a leader who walks between systems and spirit.

As General Manager of Grass Skirt Project, she operationalises structural gender infrastructure across Papua New Guinea building the conditions that allow women, girls, and young people to participate, lead, and compound value across generations. Her work is grounded in over a decade of practice spanning grassroots community development, policy design, and institutional systems change, centring Indigenous knowledge, cultural restoration, and trauma-informed leadership.

Her leadership is informed not just by qualifications. It is informed by lineage. The daughter of Hevea, who migrated from PNG's #600way in pursuit of possibility, Keesha grew up watching the cost of silence in systems never built for people like her.

Now she works to break cycles, not just manage them.

Motherhood deepened her commitment to truth-telling and reconnected her to ancestral knowledge through Tok Stori and cultural storytelling. She leads with courage, compassion, and clarity building brave spaces where communities, especially young Pasifika voices, are empowered to speak, heal, and lead.

Keesha builds the evidence that makes Pacific-led change investable including an independently validated 7.9:1 social return on investment because she holds a fierce belief that our stories are not side-notes. They are blueprints. And leadership rooted in culture, heart, and collective memory is not only possible. It is powerful. And it is provable.