Former Hawaii Red Cross CEO Diane Peters-Nguyen was fired from the nonprofit disaster relief organization in early May after she called for reforms and urged the organization to stop prodding Maui wildfire victims to move off-island, her attorney says.
Peters-Nguyen filed a complaint against the Red Cross with the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on April 9 that alleges the Red Cross retaliated against her for speaking out against the practice of encouraging wildfire survivors to move off-island, according to her lawyer Bridget Morgan-Bickerton.
On April 16, Morgan-Bickerton said Wednesday, her client was informed that she would be placed on administrative leave and then terminated. She was fired on May 3, according to Morgan-Bickerton.
“She was shocked and pretty devastated because she contributed a lot to the organization and was very loyal and proud of a lot of the things she accomplished while she was there,” Morgan-Bickerton said in an interview Wednesday. “And she was just very disappointed that the national Red Cross kind of failed to give Hawaii a voice in how to handle the aftermath of the Hawaii fires.”
Red Cross spokeswoman Mary Simkins did not respond to requests for comment.
Morgan-Bickerton said her client raised concerns about volunteers encouraging disaster victims to leave Maui on several occasions in late 2023. It was a story about Lahaina fire survivor Mike Cicchino published in Civil Beat on Dec. 8 that prompted her to reiterate her worries.
After Cicchino’s longtime rental home was devoured by the Lahaina wildfire last August, he bounced around government-funded hotel rooms while searching for a new place to live in what he described as a near-hopeless housing market.
A longstanding lack of affordable housing across Maui has made it difficult for displaced families to move on from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s temporary housing programs on the heels of the deadliest American wildfire in more than a century.
During the chaotic first weeks and months after the fire, Cicchino said he felt pressure from some disaster relief volunteers to move off-island — something he said he never considered because he shares custody of his young daughter with an ex-wife who also lives on Maui.
Cicchino told Civil Beat last year that the Red Cross encouraged him to just leave the island whenever he talked with the organization.
In May, Pacific Business News reported that Peters-Nguyen had “stepped down from the organization,” citing an email from a Red Cross spokesperson.
But Morgan-Bickerton says the Red Cross mischaracterized the nature of Peters-Nguyen’s departure. She did not step down voluntarily, she was fired, according to her attorney.
Morgan-Bickerton said her client’s retaliation complaint against the Red Cross is in the hands of the EEOC.
A spokesperson for the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission said the agency does not provide status updates on complaints to anyone other than the complainant.
Peters-Nguyen joined the Red Cross in July 2020 as its regional chief executive officer for the Pacific Islands Region, which includes Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa. She previously served for more than a decade as vice president of advancement at Chaminade University.
Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by grants from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.
