Natural Environment: Saving an Essential Part of Hawaiʻi
Here are five stories on how we can prepare for the present and the future, and what individuals, businesses, nonprofits and governments are doing to protect our natural environment.
Author: Ilima Loomis
The Next Generation of Hawaiian Designers
A new generation of Hawaiian creative consultants is challenging our expectations for indigenous design. The phrase “Hawaiian design” calls to mind familiar visual tropes: kapa patterns, hula dancers, maybe even (cringe) tiki kitsch. But a new generation of native Hawaiian…
Neighbor Island Resilience: When Disaster Strikes
A crisis can come in many forms, from the loss of a company’s founder to a volcanic eruption. These Neighbor Island businesses were knocked down and got back up. Here’s what you can learn from their lessons. Guides with Arnott’s…
Hawaii’s China Wave Smaller than Expected
Local and international forces have kept Chinese investment below what was predicted a few years ago, local experts say. But China’s elite love buying luxury condos in the Islands and real estate agents say those sales keep increasing. After Stephanie…
Maui Business Report
Table of Contents A message from the Maui Economic Development Board: Seeding Innovation Growing Pains for Maui’s Hot Economy Unemployment is near zero, but business leaders want to see more high-skilled, high-wage jobs Renewable Projects Light Up Economy Maui’s first…
Report confirms on-shore fishermen catch a lot of fish
Researchers confirm those guys with the fishing poles on the shore are collectively catching a lot of fish A new study calculates the economic value of Hawaii’s shoreline fishery, and it’s not manini. In terms of food value alone –…
Rent or Buy?
Six factors to consider when choosing whether to buy or rent a home in Hawaii Trade her peaceful rental on 2 acres in rural Maui for a condo of her very own? No thanks. Over the 30 years she has…
A Better Way
Going to court is stressful, costly and all too public. Many say that mediation offers a better way that is faster, cheaper, more private and less likely to create lifelong enemies. Tracey Wiltgen remembers the friend who was building his…
Shifting Salaries
Buffy Owens of Kamaaina Kids was meeting with consultants from the HR management company ProService Hawaii when news broke that the federal government would update the Fair Labor Standards Act by doubling the minimum pay for salaried employees. Without missing a…
Breaking Up is Hard to Do (In Love & Business)
Charletta Wilson was 18 months into a lucrative consulting contract when she realized the firm that had hired her was engaged in unethical accounting practices. She didn’t like it, but wasn’t sure what to do. Could she really walk away…
Hawaii Business Environmental Report: Pesticides
Critics say use of the chemicals by seed companies endangers the health of Hawaii’s people, but the companies insist they are using pesticides safely and following federal regulations. A recent report suggests a way forward on the issue. Malia Chun…
What’s Astronomy’s Future in Hawaii
For weeks, the astronomers, technicians and support staff working on Mauna Kea watched the protesters. Native Hawaiians and others opposed to the massive Thirty Meter Telescope gathered near the 9,000-foot mark, their encampment near Hale Pohaku, the small campus where…
Wasted
We may buy that clamshell of beautiful, ripe strawberries with the best of intentions – pancakes! cobbler! fruit salad! – but when the end of the week comes and they’re getting soft and fuzzy in the back of the produce drawer,…
Change Agents
It’s not clear how Native Hawaiian self-governance will affect Hawaii’s economy, but there is no shortage of ideas. Different Hawaiian leaders talk about changing taxes, control of land, lease rents, business incentives, ownership restrictions, import rules and much more. More…
Preparing For When This is Not a Drill
"Are you breathing?" Emergency-room doctor David Williams leans over a “patient” covered in realistic-looking ash and blood. Surrounding him in the pop-up hospital tent lie a dozen more volunteer victims, ready for triage after a plane has crashed at Kahului Airport.…
Global Dealmakers
Think your commute is tough? Next time you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour, spare a thought for Brad Smith. The founder of Kahala Capital Advisers, a private investment firm, and Kahala Aviation travels regularly to his offices in…
Working with a Bully
EXECUTIVE COACH KIM PAYTON recalls being asked to help with a case of workplace bullying. Just one problem: Who was bullying whom? “This guy is a mid-level manager,” Payton says. “He’s new to the organization, so he doesn’t understand a…
Gold Diggers
IT LOOKED LIKE the end of an era. Maui Land & Pineapple shuttered its agricultural operations after 90 years and laid off the few farm workers left out of a workforce that once numbered more than a thousand. In what many…
Mental Illness in the Workplace: Anxious, Traumatized, Depressed
A MANAGER AT A HEALTHCARE NONPROFIT ON MAUI FELT stuck. One of her employees had anxiety, made worse by the stressful, high-conflict working environment of their field. The manager wanted to help, but when she spoke with the nonprofit’s corporate…
What’s Next for Solar
If you ever use a waste-burning toilet, don’t be surprised if you find out a solar-power company installed it. That’s one of the technologies being investigated by RevoluSun, a Honolulu-based solar company that has expanded its “Smart Home” division, offering…
What’s the Big Idea?
For many years, Vassilis Syrmos didn’t spend much time thinking about business. An electrical engineer with a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech and a new career in academia, he was happy to focus on pure research. “When you’re a young assistant…
Little Fire Ant Could Take Big Bite Out of Hawaii Island Economy
As far as invasive species go, the little fire ant is considered one of the world’s worst. Its burning sting causes a painful, long-lasting and itchy rash in humans; can interfere with nesting and endanger the young of native species;…
Secrets of Healthy Workplaces
Mark Tanouye's wake-up call was actually a fire alarm. The 50-something data analyst at American Savings Bank was sitting in a conference room when a fire drill began.
Salvaging the Ferry
It’s been six years since the Alakai sailed out of Honolulu Harbor for the last time, yet somehow the Hawaii Superferry won’t go away. It haunted the 2014 campaign like the ghost of elections past. In June, an unscientific online…
Unnecessary Costs and Risks?
Dr. Kazuma Nakagawa was frustrated. Time and again, the neurointensivist at The Queen’s Medical Center saw patients transferred from Neighbor Island hospitals with intracerebral hemorrhage – a type of bleeding in the brain – even when it was clear no…
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…
Eyes on the Sky
The world’s worst traffic is not in Los Angeles, Bangkok or Beijing. It’s hundreds of miles above the Earth, where an ever-increasing mishmash of satellites, debris and junk are circling the planet at thousands of miles per hour, and a…
His Business is Ruff
PoochFit founder gets paid to run with dogs When Dustin Metzler shows up for a client meeting, it’s pandemonium – the clients are jumping with excitement, crowding each other to get close to him, even licking his knees. It’s all…
A New Way of Thinking
Five years ago, Honolulu consultant and social-media expert L.P. “Neenz” Faleafine was talking with Ian Kitajima, corporate development director of the Honolulu R&D firm Oceanit, when he told her about a new idea called “Design thinking.” Developed at the Institute…
Amazon Queen
In the downstairs office of a quiet home tucked into a side street in Pukalani, a 49-year-old married mother of two is plotting her next murder. And with a production schedule that sees her churning out five to six new…
How Safe Is Your Hospital?
When Barb had outpatient surgery to remove worrisome growths in her pelvic area last November, the biggest difference she noticed from her previous hospital stay wasn’t a fancy new medical device or miracle drug – it was all the talk,…
Hawai‘i’s Best Places to Work 2024: 78 Companies That Made the Cut
Find out who led the way in 14 categories, and how two organizations attract and keep employees despite serious challenges.
Handmade on Moloka‘i
Each of the garments made at Kealopiko’s screen-printing workshop are one-of-a-kind and tell a story.
