THIS is a Poly Girl: Annette “Nackie” Fiso-Moli

For anyone who has ever wondered if they missed their moment, Annette “Nackie” Fiso-Moli is a pretty convincing argument that there may be no such thing.

She is a mother of five and a grandmother who has already lived several lives within one. She started working at 12, spent 18 years as a Teamster, built a second career in IT, raised a family, survived cancer and somewhere along the way discovered there was still another part of herself waiting to be used.

Today, she is using it.

Nackie is helping Pacific Islanders tell our own stories, creating opportunities for young people and pushing for our community to be seen beyond the places people expect to find us. At a stage of life when women can sometimes feel the world quietly asking them to become smaller, Nackie seems to be doing the opposite. She is still building, learning, putting herself in new rooms and asking what else she can do with the life in front of her.

That energy has been building for years.

Nackie grew up Samoan in the Bay Area, surrounded by family, church, elders, cousins and community. She remembers being the tallest and biggest kid in her class and feeling insecure about standing out. Over time, the very thing she once wanted to hide became part of a lesson she still carries with her. We are not here to disappear into the crowd.

She also learned responsibility much earlier than most children. When her father became ill and could no longer work, Nackie began working at 12 to help her mother support the family. She learned early that when the people you love need you, you show up.

That instinct has followed her through nearly every chapter of her life.

Finding the Thing That Was Hers

Nackie's professional life did not follow a carefully mapped plan.

College was not an option, so she went to work. She became a Teamster and spent 18 years learning discipline, resilience and how to hold her own in demanding environments. Later, a family member encouraged her to apply for a position at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She took the chance and eventually built another career in IT, governance and compliance.

She was working, raising a family and building a good life, but she could never quite shake the feeling that there was something more she was supposed to do.

That may resonate with women who have spent years doing exactly what needed to be done. Careers happen, children grow up, families need us and responsibilities pile up. Somewhere in all of that, the question of what we still want to become can get pushed further down the list.

Nackie's answer came later.

In 2017, she and her cousin Carl Johnson co-founded PasifikaByDesign around an idea that had followed her since childhood. Pacific Islanders were doing remarkable things everywhere, yet our young people were not always seeing those people reflected back at them.

Nackie wanted Pacific Island kids to understand that role models could “come in brown.”

She wanted them to see Pacific Islanders building businesses, teaching classrooms, practicing medicine, creating art, working in technology, leading organizations and advocating for their communities. The excellence was already there. It needed to be seen.

PasifikaByDesign gave Nackie a way to help make that happen, and it also gave a name to the sense of purpose she had been searching for. She had already built careers and raised a family before this chapter took shape, a reminder that purpose does not have to arrive on anyone else's schedule. There can be another idea, another calling and another version of yourself still waiting ahead.

Our Stories, Told By Us

In the early days of PasifikaByDesign, Nackie traveled throughout the community interviewing people and documenting stories that were receiving little attention.

She found educators, entrepreneurs, artists, doctors, advocates and community leaders doing extraordinary work, often without much recognition. Those experiences eventually helped inspire Faika, PasifikaByDesign's podcast and storytelling platform, where Pacific Islanders could speak openly about our experiences, challenges, wins and identity.

After years of asking other Pacific Islanders to share their stories, Nackie began to understand that her own was worth telling too.

Of all the people she has met through this work, Christine Mauia's story has stayed especially close to her.

Christine and her husband, Jaytee, were people Nackie initially knew only in passing. Jaytee was one of the founders and board members of All My Uso's, a grassroots movement that began with a free community BBQ and a simple idea, bring people together while they are still here instead of only seeing one another at funerals.

When Nackie was diagnosed with cancer, Christine and Jaytee reached out. Jaytee was battling stomach cancer himself, yet he still made space to support someone else facing the disease.

After Jaytee passed away, Nackie watched Christine step forward. A woman she describes as once shy and more comfortable in the background carried her husband's legacy forward and helped grow All My Uso's into an organization providing mental health resources, food assistance, diabetes support and community events.

For Nackie, Christine's story is an example of the strength she sees in Pacific Island women, the ability to experience something that changes you and still find a way to make what comes next meaningful.

Years of listening to stories like Christine's also sharpened Nackie's understanding of who gets to tell them.

For too long, Pacific Island stories have often been told about us instead of by us. Today, there is a growing movement to change that, with Pacific Islanders taking greater ownership of how our people, cultures and experiences are documented and shared.

Nackie wants the next generation to have the tools to do exactly that.

Through PasifikaByDesign's Pasifika In Focus program, young Pacific Islanders learn photography, videography and digital storytelling. Nackie's daughter Timena and Petey Toilolo helped create the program and its curriculum, and for the past five years they have taught students from junior high through college.

They didn't wait for someone to give them permission or declare them ready. They took what they knew, built something useful and began sharing it with the young people coming behind them.

The cameras and creative skills matter, but so does what they represent. A young Pacific Islander behind the camera gets to decide what deserves to be seen. They can document their families, communities and culture through the perspective of someone who belongs to them. They do not have to wait for someone outside our community to decide that our stories are worth telling.

Nackie has watched Timena and Petey grow from young creatives into leaders who are now invited by other organizations to teach workshops. She sees the same spark in students who suddenly realize, I'm good at this.

It is bigger than learning a creative skill. It is a young person recognizing that their perspective has value and that they can help shape how the world sees us.

And while much of Nackie's work is focused on younger generations, she is modeling the same lesson herself.

Possibility does not belong exclusively to the young.

You can discover a talent at 15 or a purpose decades later. You can raise children and still have dreams that belong to you. You can become a grandmother and remain ambitious, curious and excited about what comes next. There is no point when a woman has to decide that the most interesting parts of her life are behind her.

Nackie certainly hasn't.

Showing Up When It Matters

During COVID, PasifikaByDesign's work took on another urgency. As data showed the devastating impact of the pandemic on Pacific Island communities, PasifikaByDesign helped create Koviki Talk, bringing Pacific Island doctors, health professionals and community leaders together to share accurate information, including programming in several Pasifika languages.

It reinforced something Nackie already understood. Who tells the story matters. Who delivers the information matters. When our communities can hear from people who understand our families, cultures and experiences, trust changes.

Her instinct to serve has also taken much simpler forms.

During COVID, Nackie saw someone online collecting small donations and using the money to surprise service workers with large tips. She loved the idea but hated asking people for money, so she started by asking her community for just 50 cents.

Snackie with Nackie was born.

Those contributions became hundreds of dollars, sometimes as much as $1,000, with the entire amount going to a server.

One experience has stayed with her. Nackie and her husband, Moses, had a server who was exceptionally warm and attentive, so they decided to surprise her. When Nackie presented the tip, the woman began to cry. Her husband had dropped her off for work that day and told her he wanted a divorce. She had carried that news through her shift while continuing to serve strangers with kindness.

Nackie never forgot it.

We rarely know what another person is carrying. Sometimes a community doing something small together can reach one person at exactly the right moment.

FOR You, Not TO You

One belief may explain Nackie's approach to life better than anything else: things don't always happen to you. Sometimes, they happen for you.

That philosophy was tested in 2018, when a car accident sent Nackie to the hospital and led doctors to something no one was looking for.

She had lymphoma.

Her thoughts immediately went to her children, Moses, and her family. Yet over time, Nackie began to see the accident differently. Without it, her cancer might not have been discovered when it was.

“The car wreck was for me. Cancer was for me,” she says.

For Nackie, that does not mean painful experiences suddenly become good ones. It means the things we cannot control may eventually reveal something we could not see while we were living through them. Her faith allows her to trust that understanding can come later.

Today, Nackie is in remission, and surviving cancer has changed the way she thinks about time. She is more willing to try something new, enter rooms she once might have second guessed and protect her energy from things that no longer deserve it.

“When you've faced something that could have taken you out, fear loses its power. You stop waiting. You stop hesitating. You start living.”

That may be one of the clearest ways to understand Nackie today.

She is living with urgency and intention, without waiting for the perfect time or for every responsibility to disappear.

The Parts We Once Carried Quietly

Some chapters of Nackie's life took much longer to speak about.

She has shared that she experienced sexual abuse when she was young and carried what happened in silence for years. At the time, she did not have the language or support to understand what she had experienced.

Today, she is willing to name it because another woman or girl may be carrying a similar silence.

Her message to them is clear: “What happened to you does not define you. It does not take away your worth, your future, or your ability to be whole.”

Nackie's experience is part of her story, but she refuses to give one painful chapter ownership of everything that followed. Her life also holds five children, grandchildren, a long career, faith, community, creativity, service, laughter and new ideas.

Her story has scars in it, and it also has momentum.

Learning to Take Up Space

As a Samoan woman, Nackie has had to learn that humility and visibility can exist together.

She remembers arriving at events representing Pasifika By Design with Carl and watching people automatically hand him the paperwork, assuming he was the person in charge.

His response was simple: “She's the boss.”

Nackie laughs about moments like that, but she understands what sits underneath them. Women, particularly Pacific Island women, can walk into a room fully qualified and still find that someone else is assumed to hold the authority.

She was raised with Samoan values of fa'aaloalo, alofa and tautua, respect, love and service. Those values remain central to who she is, and she has learned to stand firmly in her own voice while carrying them with her.

She wants Pacific Island girls to see women who look like them in technology, medicine, media, entrepreneurship, government and leadership. She wants them to know those spaces belong to them too.

But there is another group watching Nackie.

Women who have already spent years raising families, building careers, serving others and doing what life required of them.

Nackie's example says there is still room to create, lead, change direction and find the thing you did not know you were looking for. Your next chapter does not have to be quieter simply because you have already lived a few.

Still Creating It

After years of building PasifikaByDesign, Nackie is thinking about passing the torch. She wants younger Pacific Islanders to take what her generation has built and go further with it, while she opens doors, amplifies their voices and makes room for them to lead.

That does not mean Nackie is finished.

When she looks back at the 12 year old girl who went to work to help her family, the young woman building a career, the mother raising five children, the cancer survivor and the woman who eventually found herself behind a microphone, what she is proudest of is her children.

Watching them discover their gifts reinforces something her own life has taught her.

There is no single age by which a woman must have herself figured out. Sometimes experience gives us the courage and perspective to write the next chapters differently.

At this stage of her life, that is what Poly Girl's mantra, Wear Your Story, means to Nackie.

She wears all of it, the Samoan girl who once felt uncomfortable standing out, the daughter who learned responsibility at 12, the Teamster, the technology professional, the mother, the survivor, the storyteller, the leader, the Nana and the woman who is still becoming.

When asked to finish the sentence that defines this series, Nackie put it this way:

A Poly Girl is a  woman who wears her story with pride, who carries her culture, her scars, her joy, and her purpose out loud, and still walks boldly toward the life she's creating.

That last part may say the most about her: She is still creating.

Follow Nackie and Pasifika By Design:

Instagram: pasifikabydesign
Youtube: Pasifika By Design