Nkwi Flores (kin) is a citizen of Apya Yala-Turtle Island in the Kara and Kichwa Nations, deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the Andean and Amazonian bioregion of Ecuador, and a former Yuyay Kamaywk/Wisdom Custodian of this semi-permeable transboundary bioregion, Nkwi is a natural translator, or kultural lawyer, negotiating relation-based meanings across multidimensional perspective lines in nature tech, nature-based solutions, and shareholdership.

Nkwi applies their roles as a Runa/Indigenous yuyak-kamwk/scientist, Ancestral Land Trustee, and PhD Candidate (University of Tucson) to inform both their academic research and their work with communities to build collective agency and define relational approaches to ecological challenges/questions/design spaces. At base, Nkwi's work pursues socio-environmental spatial justice, culture regenerability, and the enfranchisement of Indigenous Peoples.

Their current project is the BioKulture Design Framework, which yields methodologies for designing nature-based solutions and tech for nature that center on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Rights of Nature, and Indigenous Komplexity Systems. Building on commitments of care and responsibility between People and Nature, this design framework incorporates social ecology, Indigenous governance principles, biokulture ethics, and mycelial scalability. The output methodologies facilitate partnership design between interested parties on ko::development, ko::production, and ko::creation, contrasting with prevailing Western/Eurocentric narratives of “stakeholders” and “beneficiaries.”

Nkwi also collaborates with the Northeast SARE Working Group on Tribal and Indigenous Agriculture, contributing to developing collective agency in the United States and Latin American food systems. They have worked with the UN Biodiversity Credit Alliance, the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB), The Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and Indigenous Commons, and spoke extensively at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, on rights of nature, Indigenous data sovereignty in the biodiversity markets, finance for nature, biodiversity MRV, nature ID and digital sequencing Information. Nkwi has ongoing collaborations with Cecil, Savimbo, Climate Collective, and Project Regeneration to design nature-based solutions, nature tech, and the data economy.