meet Upuia
Early Career…
Upuia is a native of the SF Bay Area, and as a first-generation Samoan-Chinese American she was the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree and then she went on to obtain a masters in counseling psychology at Chaminade University of Hawaii. Upuia spent over 7 years in Education as a school counselor and teacher, and 15+ years as a volunteer. Her aspiration was to eventually become a school principal, and an advocate for students at the state level to help make positive and judicious changes to the public school system.
Google & Kua Body Studios…
An exciting turn in 2002 took Upuia’s career away from psychology toward becoming one of the first massage therapists at Google, Inc. During her 10+ years at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, Upuia was instrumental in helping to grow and lead the most successful in-house corporate worldwide Massage Program that still exists today. She was successful in launching the current Thai Massage and Craniosacral Programs. In addition, she coordinated the first-ever educational massage “Tech Talk”, influential in obtaining full-time benefits for massage therapists and many other successful events.
In 2014, Upuia followed her entrepreneurial spirit and Kua Body Studios was born in the heart of Los Altos, CA and Pleasanton, CA. Kua Body Studios is the first-ever massage business incubator offering the highest quality care to clients with a business platform to support the professional massage entrepreneur. Learn more about Kua Body here.
WELA
At the time Upuia launched Kua Body Los Altos she hoped to meet others from her business community as way to introduce herself to the town and connect with other owners. Going door-to-door and sending out emails was not having much of an impact.
After noticing a significant number of women-owned businesses in Los Altos, Upuia had the idea to connect with them through organizing events to celebrate those exact women. The events were held in March 2016 in honor of National Women’s History Month. The idea for Women Entrepreneurs of Los Altos was born right there and then. Upuia’s mission was to continue nurturing, celebrating and cultivating relationships within the community, and through WELA she has been able to do just that. WELA has now evolved into Women Entrepreneurs Launch (WELA). That first year WELA held five major events at local venues drawing nearly 400 attendees. The organization has continued to grow since then and Upuia is not stopping. Keep an eye out as more WELA Locations pop up around the Bay Area.