Isabella "Izzie" Aiona Abbott's Hawaiian name, Kauakea, means "white rain of Hana." She is an ethnobotanist, author, and educator. Her father hailed from South China and worked in the fields for many years. Her mother was a native of Hawaii. Growing up, Izzie was fascinated by plants. On the beaches of Hawaii, her grandmother taught her to name and identify local edible and inedible plants. At Kamehameha schools, Izzie tended to the gardens, where her principal, Maude Schaeffer, taught her the Latin names of each flower. From here, Dr. Abbott's work was born. She studied botany at the University of Hawaii for her undergraduate degree, got her Master's from the University of Michigan, and became the first native Hawaiian woman to earn a PhD in science, which she obtained from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Abbott continued her work cataloguing and naming seaweeds while writing eight books and authoring 150 scientific papers. She is considered the world's top expert of Pacific marine algae.