Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk joined the Transcend team as a Partner on the Development team in 2026. Prior to this, she spent twelve years with Teach For America in a variety of roles regionally and nationally. She most recently served as a managing director of TFA’s national foundation partnerships, where she managed principal donor relationships, cultivated and stewarded national grants, and collaborated with executive leaders to strengthen the organization’s philanthropic relationships. She started her career as an elementary school special education aide at Rocketship Education in San Jose, California and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Arts in English & Japanese from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and is currently working towards a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

Outside of work, Chelsea is also a fiction writer with her work supported by Ragdale, Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, VONA/Voices, and Kundiman. She  grew up in Kāneʻohe, Hawai’i and now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her spouse and two children. When she’s not chasing after her kiddos, she is running, reading, discovering new music, and enjoying a good coffee shop work session.