About

Maker by nature.
Builder by practice.
Thinker at heart.

I'm Tre, a Product Manager based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. I spend my days thinking about product problems, roadmaps, and why things do or don't get built. I spend my evenings doing something about as analog as it gets: beating bark into kapa, carving wood, or figuring out why a design isn't working at the material level.

That probably sounds like two different people. It's actually the same one.

The making mentality

I've been a maker my whole life. Hawaiian kapa practitioner, woodworker, visual artist. What that's given me professionally isn't just a creative eye. It's a specific kind of patience with process: the understanding that good work requires constraint, repetition, and a willingness to throw out what isn't working before it becomes load-bearing.

Kapa especially. The practice is pattern systems, material limitations, and cultural protocol all at once. You don't improvise your way through it. You understand the logic of the system first, then you work within it, and sometimes you find the edges worth pushing. That's exactly how I approach product.

Kapa Practitioner Woodworking Visual Art ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Hana Noʻeau
Hand-decorated Hawaiian kapa (bark cloth) with geometric patterns, resting in a wooden tray
Tre Zamora in a green aloha shirt talking with collaborators across a table during a work session

The work

Ten years of embedded product work across Indigenous organizations, nonprofits, AgTech startups, and venture studios in Hawaiʻi. Currently an Applied Product Manager at Purple Maiʻa Foundation, which means I'm not just writing specs. I'm in the build environment alongside the people using what we ship.

My background spans UX/UI design and applied AI development. What that combination produces is a Product Manager who can operate across the full stack of the job: owning discovery, defining roadmaps, evaluating technical tradeoffs, and communicating decisions across product, design, and engineering without losing anything in translation. That's the Applied Product Lead capability, and it lives inside the Product Manager identity, not beside it.

View the Work

A few more things

01 My study of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and hana noʻeau shapes how I think about information architecture, naming, and what it means to design a system that respects the knowledge it holds.
02 My capstone research paper on Three Eras of Kapa and my capstone project Kahua, an ʻŌiwi design thinking system, are probably the most complete articulations of how I think. Ask me about either one.
03 If you want to talk about kapa, woodworking, or why algorithmic feeds are a product philosophy problem, I'm always up for that conversation too.
A child placing a maile lei on Tre Zamora at a ceremony

Recognition

Pele Award · Gold AAF Hawaiʻi · 3× recognized
National Silver ADDY Nomination AAF Hawaiʻi · College Division
Purple Prize 2024 · 1st Place Purple Maiʻa Foundation · 3-day hackathon

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Creative Media
University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu
Design & Media
Bachelor of Arts in Hawaiian Pacific Studies
University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu
Associate of Science in Interface Design
Kapiʻolani Community College · 2023

What I'm looking for

Let's build something worth pointing at.

I'm looking for a team that takes product seriously, where decisions get made for real reasons, scope has a spine, and the work ends up mattering to the people it was built for. Product Manager roles are the target. If that sounds like your organization, I want to talk.

View the Work