Parting Shot: A Beautiful Job
Thursday, 10:46 a.m. Waialua Emily Richter, part of a team of eight agronomists, is covered in pollen as she works from dusk till dawn to inspect the characteristics of non-GMO sunflowers grown each…
Hawaii Business Magazine - January 2015
For-Profit Companies That Are Not Just For Profit
Another arrow in the quiver. One more tool in the toolbox. A vehicle for change. That’s how Hawaii lawmakers and business leaders recently described a state law that in 2011 created a new business registration category for company founders and…
Pathway to Service
Randi Song had just begun working in the nonprofit world when she started looking for ways to get more involved as a volunteer. “I surfed the ’Net and landed on HIHO’s Facebook page,” she says. It was just what she…
Three Leaders in One
Dr. Kim-Ahn Nguyen has understood the importance of collaborating and adapting to change since childhood. She was just 7 when her family was evacuated from Vietnam and deposited in a small town in New Jersey to start a new life…
State Website Turns Heads
It’s three years into the state’s Business and Information Technology Transformation 12-year plan and some improvements are becoming noticeable. This year, the newly redesigned hawaii.gov website won seven awards, including the Center for Digital Government’s top award for 2014, best…
Express Yourself
If it’s been a long time since you colored outside the lines, visit Clay Cafe Hawaii, where children and adults paint on premade pottery and flex their creative muscles. “To think outside the norm, we encourage that here,” says manager…
Yes, you can become an Affordable Housing Developer
Some people think that a partial solution to Hawaii’s critical shortage of affordable housing is right in our own homes. These advocates want to boost the supply of affordable rentals by relaxing restrictions on ohana units – known officially as…
Lighting it up
Fireworks create such a magical experience that you might not realize all the work that goes beyond just igniting the rockets. Wayne Hikiji is the entertainment and production expert for Envisions Entertainment & Productions,…
Dealing with Resistance to Change
The Faith of Leadership: Insights from Hawaii’s Leaders Watermark Publishing www.bookshawaii.net Excerpt from the Book’s Introduction This is not a cookbook on leadership; there really is no such thing. There are no proven recipes that will tell you what specific…
Sharing Wine’s Diverse Delights
Name: Chuck Furuya Job: Master sommelier Experience: More than 25 years Start: Furuya started drinking wine while…
Mixing Love and Business
I grew up in a home where mom and dad successfully owned and worked together in a business for over 25 years. As a child, I helped in the business over the summers and learned some of the most enduring…
Editor's Note: We Work With Words, But Some Challenge Us
For the 18 years I worked in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s newsroom, we never used diacritical marks – the okina and kahako – in Hawaiian words. When I moved to The Honolulu Advertiser in 2004, we used them in the newspaper,…
Native Niche
Maybe being a tree farmer means having the ability to look into the future: When Jonathan Keyser and Ethan Romanchak hold a seed, they can already see the tall, strong koa it will one day become. So although there was…
It Takes a Village to Host a Tourist
As the sun rises on Waikiki Beach, some workers are going home while others have just arrived and are preparing to serve, feed and entertain up to 6,000 visitors at the Hilton. Senior writer Beverly Creamer and photographer Greg Yamamoto…
Talk Story with Mike McCartney
Chief of Staff to Gov. David Ige The former CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority has also been a state senator, executive director of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, director of the state Department of Human Resource Development, CEO of…
What’s Your View of Uber, Airbnb & Other Parts of Hawaii’s “Sharing Economy”?
I’m running late. My meeting has gone over time by 45 minutes, and suddenly the cushion I allowed for catching the bus out of downtown Honolulu to pick my daughter up from preschool in Moiliili has evaporated. It’s time for…
For Starters
Bipolar Workforce or Just Poor Polling? Hawaii’s numbers have seesawed in the workplace satisfaction rankings conducted annually for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Hawaii’s overall ranking was tops in the nation for four straight years, before falling to eighth last year.…
The Modern Version of the Advice Column
Problem: You need immediate advice, but don’t feel comfortable revealing too much about yourself, so Facebook is out of the question. “Facebook is the sanitized version of our life,” says Nicole Randall, 36, above right, who has spent the last…
The Value of Heeia
Some of the most valuable lands in ancient Hawaii were located in Kaneohe, and prized by kings and chiefs. There on the windward side of Oahu, mountain springs flowed into acres of terraced loi that grew kalo in fertile soil,…
What’s Hawaii’s Environment Worth?
The coral reefs of the main Hawaiian Islands are worth $9.7 billion. That’s the finding of a well-known 2002 study by Dutch economists Herman Cesar and Pieter van Beukering. They created an elaborate equation that summed up the various types…
Ask the Expert: Training First-Time Workers
Jerry Pupillo General Manager Wet‘n’Wild Hawaii wetnwildhawaii.com Question: My business has many entry-level positions, so I’m regularly hiring and training first-time workers. What’s the best way to do that? Answer: First-time workers can be a huge asset if your training…
5 Steps to Position Yourself for Promotion
A new year is a good time for reflection and renewal, including on your professional self. High emotional intelligence helps differentiate between average performers and stars, so executive coach Alison Zecha explains how to improve your EI and position yourself…