About

Josh Levinson grew up in Kāneʻohe and Mānoa and, over the course of his career, has worked with communities to address their central issues and concerns. His consulting practice is grounded in problem solving, and he partners closely with mission-driven organizations to help clarify direction, strengthen leadership, and build practical paths forward—while honoring the expertise already present within organizations and communities.

Through his work with JPLevinson Consulting, and previously as a Principal of Islander Institute and 3Point Consulting, Josh has served as a planner and advisor to many community-based organizations across Hawaiʻi. Organizations have also called on him to step into executive leadership during pivotal periods, and he has served as Interim Executive Director for the Coalition for a Tobacco-Free Hawaiʻi (now Hawaiʻi Public Health Institute), KEY Project, Aloha Harvest, Hoa ʻĀina O Mākaha, and Project Dāna.

Josh has also contributed to nonprofit and community leadership in volunteer capacities. He served as President of Ho‘okua‘āina for seven years and completed two terms as President of Temple Emanu-El in Honolulu, helping guide the congregation through a period of rabbinic and staff leadership transition. In partnership with the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, he developed and led Nitzavim Hawaiʻi, a multi-year initiative designed to strengthen relationships, organizational capacity, and collaboration among Jewish leaders and institutions across the state.

Before building his consulting practice, Josh was Field Organizer of Neil Abercrombie’s successful 2010 gubernatorial campaign and later served as Director of Communications in the Office of the Governor; President & CEO of Community Links Hawaiʻi, which helped social entrepreneurs launch their enterprises; and Deputy Director of DC Appleseed, a public interest advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.

Josh’s earlier experiences include working on a large oral history project about African-American life in the segregated South; public radio production at Marketplace Productions in Los Angeles; documenting the occupational health hazards of commercial fishing in North Carolina; and clerking at a civil liberties law practice in Honolulu.

Some of Josh’s little-known or forgotten accomplishments include training at a backcountry cooking school in Montana, co-founding a radio show called Hell or High Water featuring American Roots Music on WXYC-FM in Chapel Hill, and starting up (and shutting down) an ill-conceived trash transportation company called “Dump, Inc.” Josh regularly drives a bus for the Windward School District on O‘ahu, connecting students to community-based resources.

Josh is a graduate of Duke University, where he received a John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Award, and holds a Master’s degree in Folklore from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While at UNC, he was a recipient of the Archie Green Fellowship in Occupational Folklife and received a grant from the Center for the Study of the American South to support the writing of his thesis, Dropnet Tribes: Making a Day’s Work in North Carolina’s Winter Fishery. He lives in Kaelepulu, Kailua, O‘ahu with his family.