Hawai‘i’s Got Pride 2024: Spotlight on Chad Yamamoto

The VP of advertising at First Hawaiian Bank strengthens community connections through his work with the Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation.

Never miss a meeting. It’s a lesson Chad Yamamoto learned while attending Seattle University, where he later received his degree in business administration and finance.

His sophomore year, he missed a meeting of the Hui O Nani Hawai‘i club, which perpetuates the culture of the Islands and provides support for students from Hawai‘i. By the time he attended the next meeting, he discovered he’d been tapped to serve as the club’s president. “It was humbling and interesting, learning to lead a diverse group in this midsize collegiate community,” he says.

Yamamoto was born and raised in Pauoa and graduated from Maryknoll School. He has been with First Hawaiian Bank for 12 years, and this January, was promoted to VP of advertising.

“I work with the advertising group, brand campaigns and strategic marketing campaigns, whether that is a product initiative or a service initiative,” he explains. “But everyone in my group wears multiple hats. It might mean helping with an event or developing a community program. We recently took over our employee giving program, which is big because like 98 to 99% of our employees participate.”

At the bank, he has helped spearhead the employee-driven LGBTQ+ resource group. “It’s not that we felt marginalized,” he says. “We just wanted to be more connected. It’s about bringing attention to things that need attention.”

He is a board member for the Honolulu Professionals Foundation, which does fundraisers for a different non-profit t each year. In 2023, the benefit was for Hawai‘i Literacy.

Yamamoto is single, with “two rambunctious dogs,” and enjoys cooking and traveling, with recent highlights including a trip to Jordan where he saw the archaeological site at Petra.

At the Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation, he is treasurer on the executive committee. “It’s an incredible group,” he says. The foundation produces the Honolulu Pride in October, “and in the last two to three years we have started a lot more community programming. We call it Rainbow Town Hall, bringing panel discussions, followed by a mixer, on various topics, like the gay wedding industry, efforts to codify same-sex marriage into the state constitution or the significance of māhū in the community. The topics are constantly changing and evolving. It’s all about making Hawai‘i a better community and a better place.”