The Marshallese Educational Initiative, a Springdale-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, announces that Benetick Kabua Maddison has been named Executive Director. Maddison most recently served as Assistant Director and Project Specialist for Youth, Nuclear, and Climate Issues. Maddison first joined MEI in 2014 to assist with the Marshallese Oral History Project while still in high school. He took over as Director in July 2022.

On September 7, 2022, Maddison addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City on the ongoing consequences of the nuclear legacy to commemorate and promote the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. He also delivered the youth address at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Conference at the United Nations in August, 2022, and led a youth delegation to Vienna, Austria, to attend the U.N. Conference on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in June, 2022. The Marshall Islands was subjected to 67 nuclear weapons’ tests from 1946-1958, the biological, ecological, and cultural consequences of which are ongoing.