Kylie Umebayashi’s parents were not happy when she told them she wanted to be a hairstylist.

In their minds, she’d been set up for a traditional college experience, leading to a stable government job. But in hers, a desk job was unappealing. She loved working with hair and knew she had the talent and drive to build a serious career in the beauty industry.

But the criticism was intense, complete with warnings that she would bring shame to the family. To appease them, she did everything, at full speed.

After graduating from Kaimuki Christian School, Umebayashi earned an associate degree in cosmetology at Honolulu Community College while training at Marsha Nadalin Salon in Kāhala, where she had worked since she was 15. She also got licensed as a cosmetologist.

She then jumped into business administration at UH Mānoa, packing her schedule with 18 hours of credits each semester, and 12 hours each summer, while continuing to work at the salon. The academic marathon ended with a bachelor’s degree in 2020.

“I wanted to be done with school,” she says. “I was motivated to never step foot in a classroom ever again.”

Kylie Umebayashi is an independent hairstylist at Oasis Salon in Kaimukī. Her associate degree in cosmetology has paid off more than her bachelor’s. | Photo: Jeff Sanner

Her instinct to pursue the trades and specialty skills is shared by many Gen Zers across the country, who are flocking to traditional apprenticeships and trade schools. In Hawai‘i, the trend is less pronounced, but the opportunities are immense. Employers in construction, manufacturing, health care, clean energy and other sectors are eager to hire skilled employees – and they earn higher salaries and carry less debt than many people with four-year degrees.

For Umebayashi, the financial payoff came quickly. At the salon, she worked early mornings to late nights on commission, breaking six figures in annual earnings. She put some of that money into a reduced-priced “workforce” unit at a new high-rise condo in Kaka‘ako, which she was offered in a housing lottery.

In January, at age 27, she became a self-employed stylist, renting space at Oasis Salon in Kaimukī. She says her current pace is less frenetic and better for her work-life balance, but she doesn’t let herself become satisfied or complacent.

“It’s not wise when you’re in your 20s to feel comfortable,” she says. “You should feel uncomfortable, you should take risks. … I thought I would be a millionaire at 25, so I feel like I’m behind. I’ve always had a fire under me.”

Umebayashi is paying off her mortgage as aggressively as possible. Even good debt troubles her, and she takes a very “full throttle, unconventional” approach to investing in hopes of being debt-free and financially secure. She also plans to open a salon of her own.

Despite her restlessness, she realizes she’s in a pretty good spot. She says she sees many of her peers burdened with student loans and struggling to find jobs, with no clear paths forward.

“Our education system makes it seem like college is this great promise to a good life and a good future, but often it can be the opposite,” she says. “You start behind other people who don’t take on debt.”

More money, less debt

From a career perspective, Umebayashi’s skepticism about the benefits of a traditional college experience is not off-base, particularly in Hawai‘i where four-year degrees lead to less income and opportunity than in any other state.

Five years after graduating, only 43% of four-year college graduates in Hawai‘i have jobs that typically require bachelor’s degrees – the lowest percentage in the U.S. – according to a 2024 report from the Strada Education Foundation. Maryland had the highest percentage, at 60%.

And jobs that pay a living wage are scarce. Matt Stevens, a data scientist and executive director of Hawai‘i Workforce Funders Collaborative, says: “We’re 50th in the nation as to how much you can expect to earn at every educational attainment level, adjusted for cost of living. And when you get to the four-year degree, it’s actually off-the-charts low. We’re a statistical outlier.”

The state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations estimates, in uncannily precise terms, that 377,760 jobs will open in Hawai‘i between 2020 and 2030. But less than a third, or 120,290 job openings, are projected to pay at least a “living wage” of $56,841 for a single adult with no children, according to “From Crisis to Opportunity,” a report published in January by the Hawai‘i Workforce Funders Collaborative. The MIT living wage calculator recently upped that amount to $62,234.

The nonprofit collaborative calls attention to the problem of low-quality jobs and advocates for better jobs with better pay. In the process, it brings business, government, nonprofit and educational leaders together to figure out how to do that.

Community colleges in the UH system have responded with a dizzying array of short-term training and credentialing programs alongside core humanities classes and two-year degree programs. Many are new programs developed with input from employers.

“The fact is that a high school diploma is no longer enough. Students have to do something post-graduation, and there are so many options at the community colleges,” says Karen Lee, chancellor of Honolulu Community College. About 3,700 students are enrolled at HCC, which has seen its numbers steadily increase after dropping during the pandemic. That trend is similar across the UH System.

Many practical two-year associate degrees lead to trade careers, viewed broadly as skilled work requiring specialized training and often a license. People straight out of school or training programs can earn $100,000 or more – and live far more comfortable lives than a living wage provides, which would barely cover a decent one-bedroom rental, a compact car and fresh food.

The young pragmatists gravitating to the trades are sometimes called the toolbelt generation, and they’re looking for financial freedom, an escape from office life, and jobs that are less likely to be disrupted by technology and economic downturns.

Ramsey Agustin, above, and his cohort in the mechatronics program at Leeward Community College learn how to wire control panels.| Photo: Jeff Sanner

Mechatronics: demand exceeds supply

In a set of unassuming temporary buildings at Leeward Community College, students are wiring control boxes based on detailed schematics. Other rooms are filled with elaborate machines and tools for learning about sensors, robotics, control systems, computer-integrated machinery and other technology.

William Labby, an assistant professor at LCC, founded the mechatronics program to fill a specific workforce need – technicians to maintain Honolulu’s driverless trains – and it’s since blossomed into a two-year program, leading to an associate of science degree. He chafes at the “trades” label and explains that his students gain high-level math and troubleshooting skills that complement the design skills of engineers.

“Engineers and highly skilled technicians are two sides of the same coin,” he says. “Engineers are design oriented, while technicians deal with installation, maintenance, retooling, reprogramming and all the follow-on functions behind the engineering design.”

About half the mechatronics graduates are hired by Hitachi, which installs and maintains the operating system for Skyline’s trains. For the others, Labby says, companies are coming “out of the woodwork” to talk to his students, with many landing jobs at medical imaging companies, military contractors, Cirque du Soleil and the Ball Corp. in Kapolei. He says new hires at Ball, which makes 12-ounce cans, start out at about $85,000 a year, with lots of overtime opportunities.

“Automation is a growth industry in the state. We’re going to get more and more automated with all of our small food and beverage manufacturing companies,” says Labby. “Most companies would rather hire local, and now that word is getting out about this program, I’m getting more of a push for graduates. Demand exceeds my supply.”

While 22 students are enrolled in the program now, Labby says he has the capacity for 40. The obstacle is high school college counselors. “The message they convey is that if you don’t go to a four-year school, you fail, and that is not the case,” he says.

A fourth-semester student, Christian Smith, just landed a job with a military contractor, and negotiated to work part time until he graduates. Before joining the program, he was a helicopter mechanic with the military, and says he now has “a better, deeper understanding of how things work.”

Another student, Ramsey Agustin, graduated from Damien Memorial School in 2022 and spent his freshman year at Oregon State University studying mechanical engineering. Formidable out-of-state tuition and housing costs forced him to return home.

He’s now completing his final semester in the mechatronics program while also working at a machine shop in Pearl City, and he looks forward to getting a better-paid job soon and eventually finishing his bachelor’s degree.

Agustin finds the classes challenging but manageable. “I haven’t ever felt like we’re being lectured too much, which is helpful,” he says. “About 70% of the classes have been mostly hands-on, which is better for some people. I like it.”

Caitlin Fackender and Matthew Sun are second-year students in Kapi‘olani Community College’s popular radiologic technology program. | Photo courtesy: Kapi‘olani Community College

RadTech: a reverse pipeline

More than half of Kapi‘olani Community College’s students move on to four-year universities, says Misaki Takabayashi, the college’s chancellor. But some programs are so sought-after that the pipeline is reversed: people with bachelor’s degrees head to KCC for an additional associate degree.

The radiologic technology program is one of them. Two of the three students I spoke with already had degrees from UH Mānoa: Aura Coffman in animal science and Garrison Hiramatsu in elementary education. Neither felt that their choices suited them, and they were drawn to the prospect of a well-paid career with defined hours and tasks. A third student, Breanne Yang, says she always wanted to work in health care, but got sidetracked in restaurant jobs.

About 25% of applicants are accepted, with decisions based on an admissions test and grades from prerequisite courses taken in their first year. In the second year, selected students focus on how to safely image the human body using X-ray equipment and gain practical experience in health care settings.

Along with respiratory care, radiologic technology is the most popular program in the college’s health care division, and offers the highest pay. The entry-level hourly wage is $45 on O‘ahu, and a technologist with a couple of years’ experience earns about $92,000 annually, according to Program Director Kimberly Suwa. Very experienced or specialized technologists, such as those working in mammography or radiation therapy, earn about $112,000, she says.

When high schoolers tour the campus, those figures usually impress them. “They obviously understand that there is a large discrepancy between what you can make at McDonald’s versus what you can make as a technologist,” Suwa says. “But I don’t know if they fully understand the impact of being able to do a two-year degree as opposed to having to go to a four-year college.”

For one thing, the community colleges in the UH System charge $131 per credit hour for in-state students, or about $2,000 a semester for a full 15-hour course load. Tuition at UH Mānoa is $441 per credit, or about $6,600 per semester for a similar load.

Despite the lower cost, and access to scholarships and federal financial aid, more students than in the past seem to have outside jobs, says Jodi Ann Nakaoka, the chair of KCC’s health sciences department. She says the department cautions students to eliminate or minimize their work hours because the program is intense, but Hawai‘i’s high cost of living increasingly makes that impossible.

Instructors Mike Willett, right, and Brian Quinto lead the aeronautics maintenance technology program at Honolulu Community College’s airport location.| Photo: Jeff Sanner

AERO: training super mechanics

At the end of Lagoon Drive, a shoreline road snaking along the eastern edge of the Honolulu airport, young men and a handful of women are training to become airplane mechanics at Honolulu Community College’s aeronautics maintenance technology program.

Vintage and modern planes line the perimeter of the building, and engines and tools fill the interior workshops. All of the aircraft have been donated, including a small Cessna 172, a replica of an old crop duster, and a DC-9 with its engine removed but airframe intact.

Teams of students are taking engines apart and putting them back together, and learning how to diagnose and fix problems that the faculty have introduced. Much of the classroom instruction gets translated into projects, such as constructing a cross-section of a plane’s wing based on blueprints.

Instructor Brian Quinto drills the students on the importance of safety and attention to detail. “We’re often compared to auto mechanics. No denigration to them, but if something goes wrong with your car, you just pull over.” Signing off on repairs becomes a legal document, he explains to students, and planes aren’t cleared to take off until the mechanic says so.

Andy Tran, a second-year student in the program, says “there’s a big learning curve for the program. The more I learn, the harder it is to fix things.”

Students in the two-year AERO program learn to troubleshoot problems using a wide range of donated airplane engines.| Photo: Jeff Sanner

“Many of the new students are like deer in the headlights because it comes at you really fast, but we have a lot to teach in a relatively short amount of time,” explains Mike Willett, the lead instructor at the AERO program. It’s one of Honolulu Community College’s most popular offerings, with about 75 current students and more than a hundred on a growing waitlist.

Tran took a sheet-metal course at HCC during the year he waited for a spot to open up. He says he loves everything about aviation, but mechanical training is much cheaper and more accessible than flight school.

The schedule runs for seven hours, four days a week, and leads to an associate of science degree. At the end of the two-year program, the pass rate for first-time test takers seeking FAA certification exceeds the national average, says Willett.

Like the radiologic technology program at KCC, many of the students have outside jobs. Micah Holmberg, who used to repair motorcycles and manufacturing equipment, attends the full-time program, then works as a full-time aircraft mechanic helper nearby. At the end of his double shifts, he travels home to the North Shore.

Hawaiian Airlines regularly opens slots for its part-time paid apprenticeship program for AERO students, and a new scholarship program offers students financial assistance and mentorship. Both were developed to fill openings at Hawaiian caused by retirements. Willett says graduates are also hired by companies such as Hawaii Air Cargo, Swissport and United Airlines, and they leave the program with advanced mechanical skills they can take anywhere.

An apprenticeship changed his life

Drew Maberry works long hours as a journeyman millwright, a job that goes back to classical antiquity when skilled carpenters designed and built water mills. Today, millwrights install, maintain, repair and reassemble machinery used in factories, power plants and construction sites.

On the day we spoke, Maberry had just returned from Par Hawaii, where he was welding large platforms on top of the existing plant in Kapolei. His employer, APB, short for American Piping & Boiler Co., has been contracted by Par to upgrade the facility.

Drew Maberry logged 8,000 hours as an apprentice before earning the title of journeyman millwright. Many of those hours were at AES when it was a coal-burning plant, shown here. Photo courtesy: Drew Maberry

He sets the scene of his jobsite: “I’m wearing fire-resistant clothes and a head sock and gloves. I’m basically covered head to toe, with a hard hat that I change into welding headgear. And I’m two stories high,” welding in the blistering sun of Kapolei.

While the job is strenuous, the pay is good, at $55 an hour, and the benefits are great. With overtime, Maberry’s weekly check is more than he ever imagined he could make when he left high school in Missouri, feeling “lost” and stuck in low-wage retail jobs.

In his mid-20s, Maberry moved to Waimānalo, where his father had relocated. He worked in restaurants for a while, then decided he needed a “career job” so he could live on his own.

After passing math and physical tests, he got a traditional carpentry apprenticeship with the Hawaii Carpenters Apprenticeship & Training Fund, then switched to the union’s millwright apprenticeship when it opened for the first time in 2020.

The past decade has seen a sharp increase in active registered apprenticeships nationwide, from 359,388 in 2015 to over 696,205 in 2025, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. Hawai‘i’s trend line is less robust, with a steep decline in apprenticeships in 2022, though those numbers have inched up in the past couple of years. In 2025, there are 6,094 active apprenticeships in the state, of which about 85% are in construction, 11% in manufacturing and the rest in a smattering of other industries.

Maberry recently completed his apprenticeship’s required 8,000 hours of work and weekly classes, which earned him the official title of journeyman millwright.

Some of his apprenticeship jobs were challenging, he says, including 12-hour days at AES when it was still a coal-fired power plant, with no days off. “I probably have black lung from welding in tight spaces at AES and shoveling dust, or whatever it was,” he says with a laugh.

And he’s worked with plenty of old-school “tough-love” guys, but says that he’s “fortunate that my boss at APB is so understanding and good at dealing with different personalities, which is important because it can be such long hours and grueling work.”

Despite the job’s ups and downs, Maberry says he’s finally financially comfortable and able to provide for his 5-year-old son. And he feels optimistic about the future: “I think about how far I’ve come and I just want to keep learning and building.”

Alternate on-the-job training routes

Beyond Hawai‘i’s dozens of skilled apprenticeships (see the list at tinyurl.com/hiapprentice) spanning from bricklayers to elevator constructors, some large private companies offer their own paid training programs.

Hawaiian Electric’s apprenticeship program, for example, trains people to be linemen, electricians, maintenance mechanics, and maintenance or substation electricians. The program pairs apprentices with experienced journeymen, and supplements on-the-job training with classroom or online instruction. Apprentices are hired based on written and physical tests.

About 250 employees on O‘ahu and in Maui County have completed the program since 2009, and 22 on Hawai‘i Island since 2017, according to Communications Manager Darren Pai. “Establishing our own training programs allows us to address skilled labor shortages, such as linemen, and maintain high safety standards,” he explains in an email.

The more than century-old Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard apprenticeship is the most popular program at Honolulu Community College; it provides the academic component for an associate of applied science degree upon completion.

Other apprenticeships are more informal. The 29-year-old who repaired my refrigerator says he discovered the trade circuitously. He studied environmental science at the University of Montana, then returned home to Hawai‘i Island and started a landscaping business.

After a few years, he decided to do something “less strenuous and more analytical” and mentored with a seasoned HVAC and appliance repair professional on Hawai‘i Island. Eventually, he branched out on his own in Honolulu, where he says the job is “humbling and stressful sometimes, but the fun is in learning new things and diagnosing problems.”

Reaching the other 50%

While apprenticeships and associate degrees are established routes to good jobs, Hawai‘i’s community colleges also offer short-term vocational training. The programs fill a training gap in the Islands since most private vocational schools only teach massage therapy, according to the state Department of Education’s list of licensed schools. And in June, the two Job Corps training centers on O‘ahu and Maui were terminated by the U.S. Department of Labor, along with 97 others across the country.

Short-term training lets participants sample careers, build foundational skills or upskill into better-paying jobs in a variety of areas. For example:

• LCC offers commercial driver courses, as does the Hawaiian Council through its Hawaiian Trades Academy.

• KCC recently contracted with the Kahala Hotel & Resort to develop training for employees who want to advance into midlevel leadership roles.

• HCC launched a summer program that brings high schoolers to campus to try out three career and technical education options.

• The Building Industry Association of Hawai‘i offers free pre-apprenticeship training that covers math, blueprint reading and the fundamentals of the trade.

• UH Maui College and Hawaiian Electric created a free training program that can lead to jobs at power-generating stations.

• High schools across the Islands have introduced career and technical education that helps students gain real-world skills and work experience.

The UH community colleges’ Good Jobs Hawai‘i initiative helps coordinate and fund many of these programs, using $35 million in federal Covid-recovery grants and private philanthropy. Program Manager Nicolette van der Lee says that grant funding runs out next year, but the state Legislature will continue to fund free, noncredit courses for those seeking careers as commercial drivers, nursing aides, information technologists and other high-demand positions.

The Good Jobs program targets the nearly 50% of residents who forgo college and other formal training.

“We’ve been seeking to connect with them and show that you don’t have to have a job in the hotel industry working as a server, or some other entry-level job that doesn’t have a pathway to a living wage,” says Van der Lee.

Early results are promising

A preliminary study shows that short-term training has a positive impact. Hawai‘i residents who completed Good Jobs training were making, on average, about 12% more six months after completing the program, according to a July 7 blog post on the UH Economic Research Organization’s website.

Among those employed before the program, 38% ended up moving to a different industry, where they saw even higher income gains. The biggest gains were for people switching to the health care industry, which the report says saw “average quarterly wage increases approaching $4,000,” or about $16,000 annually.

Younger participants just entering the workplace found jobs in industries “with stronger wage potential, often linked to their training,” according to the blog post.

Van der Lee says the Good Jobs initiative is part of a thriving workforce development ecosystem in Hawai‘i, spearheaded by the state Workforce Development Council. “We want to change the narrative that says you have to leave Hawai‘i for more education and opportunity,” says Van der Lee. “We’re trying to create the education and training infrastructure here, and also the employment opportunities individuals need to get the good jobs so they can stay.”

A troubled economy

Anna Pacheco, president and CEO at AE Consulting, has spent more than a decade researching education and workforce challenges, and consulting with local organizations. She sees unprecedented opportunities now in trade careers, driven by a wave of retirements.

“It has really put us into a talent crunch,” she says. “We’ve got this huge gap with the more senior folks leaving positions and the younger generation not entering them at the speed we need to fill those gaps. And the problem is becoming more and more profound.”

Like Labby from LCC, she says the predominant message that young people hear is to go to college, get a four-year degree and land a professional job.

“The reality is that our economy relies heavily on those trades positions,” Pacheco says. “I think we’re at an inflection point where we need to get students into those careers because if we don’t, we’re not going to reach our clean energy goals or our housing goals.”

While the prospects are promising for people with practical skills in the trades, the picture for recent four-year college graduates is blurrier. The current hiring slowdown, with new jobs only trickling into the U.S. economy, can hit recent graduates the hardest.

Students who majored in computer science, for instance – once seen as a sure bet, complete with snarky “learn to code” comments to English majors – are now the ones who are often bemoaning their job prospects. Today, 6.1% of recent graduates in computer science and 7.5% of computer engineering majors are unemployed – some of the highest rates of all college majors, according to recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Popular majors such as environmental studies now have higher underemployment rates than art history majors, with 49% working in jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Even new graduates in journalism have significantly less underemployment, at 36%.

In Hawai‘i, UHERO economists see the state slipping into a mild recession in 2026, the result of federal layoffs and less consumer spending and tourism due to tariffs and inflation. Only construction remains resilient, according to UHERO’s September 2025 forecast.

While higher education is always valuable, and often the pathway to a prosperous, fulfilling life, that path can be long, winding and expensive. Quicker, more direct routes are launching many of Hawai‘i’s young adults into rewarding careers, and with fewer financial risks – a big advantage in uncertain times.

“That’s my big goal,” she says at the outset of our conversation. “To remind people that their kindness is an asset on the road to success. You can express love and truth at the same time—that’s what Radical Candor is. It’s caring personally and challenging directly.”

It’s a timely message in an era where social media often warns that kindness can be mistaken for weakness. Scott is unmoved by this trend.

“You can be as kind as you want,” she says. “As long as you also challenge people. Tell them what’s awesome—but also when they’re messing up. That’s real kindness.”

For Scott, kindness isn’t softness. It’s clarity. And clarity, delivered humanely, is what workplaces desperately need.

When Silence Harms More Than Honesty

Leaders often avoid difficult conversations in the name of protecting feelings. Scott argues this creates far more damage than speaking up.

“There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re a dead man walking with your boss,” she explains. “People know when they’re making mistakes. If you don’t point it out, you’re not doing your job.”

Scott outlines the three behaviors that can define workplace culture:

• Radical Candor – caring personally and challenging directly
• Obnoxious Aggression – challenge without care
• Ruinous Empathy – caring so much about feelings that the truth never gets said

Ruinous empathy is often the most misunderstood.

“It’s not nice,” she says. “It hurts the person who needs the truth, it hurts the team who has to redo work, and it hurts results. It’s bad for everyone.”

Five Generations, One Workplace

Today’s workplaces often include Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha interns. The multigenerational mix can be energizing—or challenging.

“Yes, everyone has different expectations,” Scott acknowledges. “But we have to be careful about generalizing by generation. We know not to stereotype gender or race, yet we seem eager to stereotype by generation.”

She draws from her experience managing 700 recent college graduates at Google.

“For all of human history, the younger generation has told the older generation how they screwed up the world,” she says with a smile. “The way I earn my right to give critical feedback is by being open to the feedback they give me. When young employees feel seen and appreciated, they’re hungry to learn—but I have to earn it.”

Drop the Email—Take a Walk

As communication leans more heavily on email, Slack, and text, Scott believes leaders must return to the fundamentals of real conversation.

“Don’t send an email. Don’t send a text,” she cautions. “Slack is a feedback train wreck waiting to happen.”

Her advice is refreshingly simple.

“If you’re in person, take a walk. If you’re remote, pick up the phone. Not a video call—there’s too much noise in interpreting facial expressions on Zoom. Just call. Listen to the words.”

She notes that body language can confuse rather than clarify. “If I tear up, it doesn’t mean I’m sad—it probably means I’m furious. Facial expressions can be misleading.”

‘AI will never be able to do: Have a Real Human Relationship’

Though this will be her first time in Waikiki, Scott has long felt at home in Hawaiʻi.

“I’ve been coming to the Big Island every Christmas for two weeks,” she says. “Beach 69 is my happy place. I snorkel the whole time.”

As she prepares for her event, her message crystallizes around one core belief—one that may resonate deeply with Hawaiʻi’s leaders navigating generational shifts, hybrid work, and evolving expectations.

“Kindness is an asset,” Scott says. “And it’s the one thing we can do for each other that AI will never be able to do: have a real human relationship.”

It’s a message rooted in humanity—and one Scott hopes will stay with Hawaiʻi long after her visit.

To register for next week’s event, please click on the link:
2025 Annual Membership Meeting – Hawaiʻi Employers Council

Twice a year, Hawaii Business Magazine asks the Anthology Marketing Group to take the pulse of the local business community. This spring, owners and executives of 407 companies each had unique stories to tell about their firms’ financial situations – ranging from awesome to awful and everything in between.

When taken as a whole, the results of this latest BOSS Survey are worse than last fall’s survey. Much more disturbing is that optimism about the local economy’s future fell dramatically.

“We’re bruised but back on track. We have not fully recovered from 2020 yet, but we work on this every day. We tackled higher food, liquor and labor costs by raising prices, but a lot of hidden costs affect our bottom line.”

— Kaleo Schneider, Director of Operations, Buzz’s Original Steak House (O’ahu)

“We are flourishing. Our sales are strong. We have really good staffing and all our positions are full. We have a good future.”

— Leila Thompson | GM, Window Trends (Kaua’i)

“Barely surviving. We have only booked 3 new weddings since the August fires. The message potential clients get is that those who live on Maui do not want them to come. Another issue is many wedding groups can’t afford the available accommodations.”

— A Maui wedding company that asked to remain anonymous

Optimism about the future – or the lack of it – is a huge factor in business decision-making. Optimistic business leaders will hire more workers, launch expansions and offer new products and services. Less optimistic leaders may freeze or cut staff, delay expansion and reduce product lines or services.

To further probe these attitudes, the survey’s respondents were asked which of these statements best describes their companies’ spending plans for the coming 12 months.

“The economy will hold steady. There’s still a lot of willingness to come to Hawai’i.”

— Byron Kay, Owner, Kona Honu Divers (Hawai’i Island)

“It’s hard to predict… but if housing continues to rise in cost, the economy will fall, because we don’t have the workforce.”

— Nichole Hutaff-Nakamura, President, Valley Isle Excursions

“Speaking with tons of friends, vendors, colleagues in the tourism and wedding industry this year, they are all in the same boat as I am. we’re not getting new business and not sure if it will happen any time in the next few years.”

— A Maui wedding company that asked to remain anonymous

“The economy is getting worse, and I expect this trend will continue until 2026. There are many issues worldwide and until they are cleared up, it will affect our economy.”

— Kaleo Schneider, Buzz’s Original Steak House

What Changes in Hawai‘i Taxes Do You Favor?

In May, state legislators passed, and Gov. Josh Green signed into law, a major income tax cut for Hawai’i residents. However, this year’s Legislature rejected Green’s proposed $25 visitor tax and a proposed exemption to the excise tax for food sales.

Please note: We conducted most of the BOSS Survey of local business owners and executives and all of the 808 Poll of the general public during the legislative session, before the income tax cut received final approval.

“I see businesses picking up more of the tax burden, whether it’s car registrations or in our employment taxes. Visitors too. They get dinged all the time with an extra fee for renting a car.”

— Leila Thompson | Window Trends

“I strongly oppose a visitor tax. If you want less of something, you tax it. If you don’t want less tourism, which drives our economy, then don’t raise taxes.”

— Byron Kay | Kona Huna Divers

Did the Cost of Goods and Services Go up a Lot, a Little or Hold Steady?

One recent phenomenon in the news concerns inflation and people’s perceptions of it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says consumer prices nationwide for all items rose 3.4% from December 2022 to December 2023 – a little more than half the rate of 6.5% in the previous 12 months. And though the inflation rate fluctuates from month to month, the overall inflation rate for the first four months of 2024 is similar to 2023’s.

Nonetheless, surveys show many people do not feel inflation has fallen. One commonly cited explanation: These people see that prices overall have not come down but remain much higher than before the pandemic. In this explanation, people equate today’s persistent high prices with continued high rates of inflation.

The next two questions in the BOSS Survey aim to test similar perceptions about higher prices among businesspeople. First, we asked businesses how much they had raised their own prices in the past year – something they are unlikely to exaggerate. We also asked them how much their vendors had raised prices in the same period. We compare the answers side by side.

I think that if people’s perceptions of prices were generally accurate, then the numbers in each row would be more similar. After all, the BOSS Survey includes many local businesses that supply goods and services to other local businesses. Both groups of businesses have imposed higher prices on others, and paid higher prices imposed by other buinesses.

While only 15% of businesses surveyed said they raised their prices a lot in the past year, 41% of them said their vendors raised prices a lot. Knowing a bit about human psychology, I think it only natural that people and businesses are more likely to emphasize in their minds the price increases imposed on themselves, and less likely to emphasize in their minds the price increases they impose on others. I would probably think that way myself.

Who Should Lead Lahaina’s Fire Recovery?

Methodology for These Surveys

The BOSS Survey and 808 Poll were conducted by Anthology, a Hawai‘i marketing group that is part of a global company called Finn Partners.

The respondents for the BOSS Survey were found by using a company listing purchased from a third-party business sample provider, as well as Hawaii Business Magazine’s Top 250 list and classified yellow page listings.

Interviews were done online as well as by telephone with owners, senior executives and other people at participating companies who were knowledgeable about their companies’ operations and finances. A total of 407 random interviews on O‘ahu, Maui, Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i were conducted from March 27 to May 15, 2024. A sample of this size has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.86 percentage points with a 95% confidence level.

The sample of companies was stratified based on number of employees. Businesses with one to nine employees were designated as “very small” and those with 10 to 49 employees were designated as “small.” Medium-sized companies were those with 50 to 99 employees and companies with 100 or more employees were classified as “large.” The data was weighted to reflect the proper proportions of each company segment based on numbers of employees as reported by the state of Hawai‘i Department of Labor.

A secondary goal was to complete interviews with a target set of companies that derive relatively significant proportions of their revenues from retail sales. A total of 71 were surveyed in this segment.

A separate online survey called the 808 Poll was conducted of the general public. A total of 459 surveys were conducted from March 22 to April 1, 2024. Respondents were screened to ensure they were at least 18 years of age and fulltime Hawai‘i residents.

The margin of error for a sample of this size is plus or minus 4.57 percentage points with a 95% confidence level.

They’re young, ultra-casual, and opinionated. They like flexible work arrangements and would rather not do email. Many, in fact, would rather not come to your drab, boring workspace at all. Welcome to Generation Z. They’re the youngest members on the team, and they’re making earlier intergenerational differences seem downright quaint. Consider these local examples:

• A Gen Zer asks her boss for a raise just two weeks after getting hired.
• A young team member keeps missing work, with no warning or explanation.
• A boss gives his new hire feedback, and is surprised to get some in return.
• A 22-year-old lands a dream job, but already feels disillusioned: “This is not what I imagined.”

In interviews with Gen Zers and their employers in Hawai‘i, people are reporting misunderstandings, misaligned expectations and outright culture clashes. And the problems aren’t going away, no matter how many demands and threats employers make.

Consider this too: In a national survey of managers conducted by resumebuilder.com in 2023, 1 in 8 said they had fired a Gen Z employee a week after hiring them.

But refilling positions isn’t easy, especially in Hawai‘i. The state’s population has been falling for several years, with the “brain drain” of young, educated people driving out-migration as they move for college or jobs in the continental U.S. They often don’t come back.

And the percentage of older residents here is growing. About 1 in 5 was 65 or older in 2020, a proportion that’s projected to rise. With fewer young people entering the workplace than those aging out, the stakes are high for companies to cultivate the next generation.

Despite all the complaints, Gen Z can be the best thing to happen to a business. Young employees can be creative, entrepreneurial, technically adept, not afraid to question why a business is doing things so inefficiently, and eager to work hard when they feel valued and challenged.

So what makes this age group so different from previous ones? What motivates them and helps them do their best work? And how can employers modify the old rules and norms to appeal to this new generation, tap into their strengths and entice them to stay on the job?

Here’s what a selection of Hawai‘i’s Gen Zers – and the people who work with them – say about understanding Gen Z, bridging generational divides and creating a pipeline of talented young leaders who can keep enterprises thriving long after Boomers have made their exits.

A New Breed

In Hawai‘i, Gen Z is made up of about 260,000 people born between 1997 and 2012. Now around 12 to 27 years old, the cohort has been steadily joining workplaces, often baffling, frustrating or even infuriating their older colleagues.

“Every generation has differences, and there’s always tension. But this one feels like it’s more of a gap,” says Katie Chang, executive director of the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders and an upbeat Millennial.

The Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders has emerged as an informal think tank on the issue of generational differences in Hawai‘i, in part because it’s immersed in both the world of young people and the organizations that support its mission.

More than 800 high schoolers across the Islands attend the nonprofit’s weekly in-person classes, where they learn skills such as conflict resolution, opinion writing, critical thinking and advocacy, culminating in major community projects. The goal is to help young people see themselves as leaders and start practicing the habits of leadership.

In December 2023, about a dozen Gen Zers from CTL’s vast alumni network were brought to Honolulu for what Chang calls an “explosive conversation,” where stereotypes were debated, confirmed and rebutted. The session is helping shape CTL’s presentations to its funding partners, many of whom are concerned about finding and keeping young workers.

“We still have to insist on character formation and accountability for our young people, such as insisting on the discipline of showing up consistently, and showing respect. On the flip side, this is a radically different generation, and they really do want to be seen, heard and loved. Both sides are going to have to move and meet in the middle.”

— Katie Chang, Millennial and Executive Director, Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders

In the popular narrative, Gen Zers are often described as lazy, prone to anxiety, socially awkward, tech-addled and distracted, obsessed with work-life balance, and ready to bolt from jobs that don’t give them what they need.

Many of Hawai‘i’s Gen Zers say the stereotypes are partly true, but they fail to capture the whole story. For every negative trait, there’s a positive one, or a contradictory trait that complicates the picture. And many stereotypes point to the biases and unchallenged norms of older generations.

Sean Maskrey, a 2021 graduate of ‘Iolani School and rising senior in economics and political science at the University of British Columbia, says some generalizations are just wrong, such as the laziness jab.

“It strikes a chord with me to hear we’re not trying,” he says. “We weren’t born and told to be lazy. That wasn’t something that was ever shown in a positive light for us. I don’t think anyone prioritizes laziness or relaxing or wanting to have a work-free life.”

He chafes at the condescension he sometimes hears, and the lack of understanding about the pressures his generation has experienced. Gen Z, for example, gets blamed for being addicted to the technology that adults developed and handed to children. “I don’t think kids had a choice,” he says.

Others, such as Alexa, a Hawai‘i based Gen Zer who was recently promoted to operations manager in her organization’s technical division, says it’s the older generations that often create problems by being stuck in their ways. As an example, she points to the software used at her company: It was installed in the year she was born.

“It takes a younger person to ask, ‘Why are we doing this? This doesn’t make sense,’ ” says Alexa, who asked that her real name not be used. “The younger folks are trying to improve things, but they face resistance from people who want to keep it the same as it’s always been.”

“In my experiences, the most important thing is just having the openness to ask questions and not being put down by asking those questions. … An ideal workplace is to have clear expectations about the scope of the job and what’s expected.”

— Sean Maskrey, Gen Zer and a student at the University of British Columbia

So Smart, So Clueless

As digital natives tethered to their devices, Gen Zers have a lot of information at their fingertips, and they absorb viewpoints from many voices. They’re knowledgeable, articulate and very good at presenting themselves, explains Chang.

“It’s a real paradox, then, how they seem to be clueless in the sense of the knowledge gap, and the whole skills gap seems to be widening exponentially,” says Chang. When high school students begin working on their final projects with CTL, she says they can identify pressing problems to address, but their solutions are often “a complete non sequitur.”

“Even the basic critical thinking of how do you get from A to B, and therefore to C, used to come more naturally, and now we’re having to train for it,” Chang says. She says employers report the same. Chang says she thinks social media, where it’s never quiet and information is rarely linear, plays a part. Long stretches of deep reading and thinking have grown increasingly rare, and can seem impossible to achieve.

A bestselling new book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, “The Anxious Generation,” argues that Gen Zers have literally had their brains rewired by technology, and their progress toward independence stunted by overprotective parenting.

The situation developed quickly. In 2007, the iPhone appeared. In 2009, “like” and “share” buttons were added to social media. In 2010, the front-facing camera was introduced, allowing teens to embark on self-curated lives, offered up for approval from a fickle virtual world. The result, argues Haidt, has been a youth mental health crisis, along with sleep deprivation, the loss of real social ties and fragmented attention spans.

Maskrey could feel the impact of social media when he was working on college assignments. He deleted TikTok from his phone last year, which he says has helped. “The ability for critical thinking is definitely diminishing, and I felt it happening to me,” he says.

Others were also struggling. Maskrey says one of his professors became exasperated and wanted answers from the class: Why can’t anyone get their work in on time? Why can’t they extrapolate their own opinions from the readings?

Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

Alone in a Noisy World

For April Nakamura, a longtime teacher at McKinley High School, associate director of CTL and a Gen Xer, the generational shift became noticeable before the pandemic, and was mostly centered on socialization.

“Throughout my teaching career, it’s always been very easy to build relationships with students. But starting around 2018, I began to notice that it’s almost like a veil has come down. They just don’t really talk to you or engage with you,” says Nakamura.

Students are self-aware, if confused about their own behaviors, she says. They tell her, “We don’t know what’s wrong with us. I don’t know why we are this way.” She worries about their social lives, and says they rarely have anything to report from the weekend, except sleeping, homework, playing video games and hanging out at home.

The pandemic accelerated those feelings of isolation and alienation.

“Covid was a defining moment for my class,” says Kimi Vidinha, who graduated from Waimea High School on Kaua‘i in 2023 and recently finished her freshman year at Pacific University in Oregon. “A lot of us have trouble communicating and have not fully matured, which is really apparent in college.” She says most students don’t contribute to classroom discussions and many stick with the people they know on campus.

Since exiting the pandemic, when school and social life were fully mediated by devices, she says that many of her peers have become addicted to their phones and distracted by the glossy mirror world of social media.

“You see what people look like on Instagram, and what other people are doing, and it gets hard to differentiate between reality and what you see on social media. … It’s completely blurred.”

Vidinha can find herself “sucked into the loop” of Instagram but prefers staying busy with classes, clubs and track practice. And she’s something of a pandemic outlier: The long school shutdown turned her into a more extroverted person. “I was able to self-reflect and become a more confident version of myself,” she says. “My personality kind of did a flip-flop.”

Ezekiel Bernardo-Flores, a private banking associate in First Hawaiian Bank’s Wealth Management Group and an older Gen Zer, says his generation connects to the world through social media, which is a “gateway for you to feel that you’re less than.”

He says he’s bombarded with postings from people who seem to be wildly successful, even if their stories are unverifiable or even fabricated. It leads to making comparisons and feeling bad about your own achievements.

“I’m very hard on myself, and I’m not the only person that’s hard on themselves,” says Bernardo-Flores, who imagines an easier, less fraught past, before social media, when the only success stories you heard about were from people you knew in real life.

For Maskrey, quiet self-reflection is difficult for his generation. He thinks the nonstop, all-consuming nature of social media has interfered with developing a secure identity, away from the judgment or approval of the comments area.

“I think there is a loss of identity in general and the idea of self for young people,” he explains. “There’s no opportunity to really think about it and develop it because it’s kind of like your identity is what’s trending now.” He says that shaky foundation leads to perceptions of Gen Z being “super emotional and reactionary” in the workplace.

Already Burnt Out

The ceaseless distractions of social media contribute to premature burnout, says Trisha Mei Ramelb, a student leadership facilitator and marketing coordinator at Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders and a Gen Z alum of the organization.

“It’s hard to turn off. And I think that’s why we feel so restless and so tired all the time, because we aren’t able to turn off and separate; we’re always on the go,” she says. “Usually you would expect burnout in midcareer but now it’s happening in high schools.

“Young people describe losing momentum and feeling like it’s a perpetual Monday, with fatigue and brain fog, unable to see clearly. Guarding mental health has become a priority among Gen Z.”

Gen Zers want workplaces to prioritize mental health as well. A 2022 national survey of 19-to-25- year-olds found:

• 82% of Gen Z employees say mental health days are important.
• 31% find it difficult to cope with pressure and stress at work.
• 42% say burnout and lack of work-life balance would make them quit their jobs.

Justin Fragiao, technical director at UH Mānoa’s Kennedy Theatre, a current graduate student and a Millennial, says he appreciates Gen Zers’ openness about discussing mental health, having struggled himself, especially as a high schooler. But he also worries that, after they graduate from college, they won’t find the same level of inclusivity and honesty in the working world.

He gets exasperated when his staff of 10 reasonably well-paid student workers continually ask for mental-health days, or just fail to show up. Sometimes they don’t even email or text to let him know.

When they do show up for work, they bring all their emotions with them. “They just wear everything that’s going on with them, whether they’re elated about something or having a terrible, terrible day, and then everyone should know about it,” Fragiao says.

As a new boss, he found himself shouldering much of the workload of building giant sets for productions, and under tight deadlines. It wasn’t sustainable. Now, he’s working to impose more rules on students and expectations about their roles. He says he wants to build students’ skills so they can handle multiple tasks, and instill a sense of professionalism in them.

Lord Ryan Lizardo, the associate VP of education at the Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i and a young Millennial, was a teacher at Campbell High School for six years. He also saw intense emotions from students that affected their ability to cope.

“If something was happening in their personal lives, they would immediately shut off,” he says. “Being sensitive to situations is a critical piece to navigating mental health with this upcoming generation. They want a workplace that supports their growth and values their mental health.”

“Yes!” to Work-Life Balance

In a poll that CTL conducted of Hawai‘i students and alums, 74% said they would choose work-life balance over a high salary.

It’s a natural byproduct of the stress and anxiety that they struggle with more than other generations. It can also be a reaction to the workaholism of their parents, or the lack of loyalty that workplaces have shown employees, including their parents. That lack of loyalty is usually reciprocated.

Gen Zers had more than a full year disrupted by pandemic shutdowns. The older ones learned firsthand that they could work from anywhere, often on their own time. And they’re certainly not nostalgic for the old workplace of fixed hours and open offices.

Many, in fact, recoil at the trade-off they’re expected to make: decades of work, nearly all their daylight hours, the bulk of their adult existence on Earth, in exchange for enough money to one day buy a little house. Is that really appealing?

Maskrey, for example, has spent much of his life on a familiar path for Hawai‘i’s high-achieving youth: 13 years at a homework-heavy private school, an Eagle Scout, multiple summer internships and now deep into a five-year program that leads to a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in business management.

Lately, he’s been rethinking the many hours he’s spent in a volunteer leadership role at his university in Canada, and questioning what these years of effort will actually bring. For all the talk about employers not being able to fill jobs, he says many of his peers struggle to land anything.

He says he’s gotten internships in Hawai‘i through personal connections; when he didn’t know anyone, his applications went nowhere. Many of his college friends can’t find jobs, even those graduating in popular fields such as environmental studies. One friend applied for dozens of service jobs to help pay living expenses, with no callbacks.

“The biggest experience for my generation is that we’re just not hearing back,” says Maskrey. “We’re applying to so many jobs and not hearing from anybody.” And they’re not being picky, he says. They’re just trying to keep moving forward with their lives.

In an ideal world, he says Gen Zers want jobs that align with their values and offer a sense of purpose, without sapping away all their time and individuality. “Gen Z prioritizes being real and just being human. People are people, not capital,” he says.

The worst work situation, Maskrey says, would be “feeling like you just have to show up and clock in, sit and put your head down forever, and then clock out at 5 and go home. That’s a nightmare situation for me.”

Alexa is living in that world now, having made the “difficult transition” from a part-time job while attending UH Mānoa to a full-time role with her organization. Her recent promotion to a managerial position has elevated her stress and sense of unease. She says she “feels the burnout.”

“I had certain expectations and higher hopes of what working was going to be like,” she says. “And then you come into the workplace and realize this is not what I imagined. You’re faced with the reality of working 9 to 5 for the rest of your life, and it’s very depressing.”

Gen Z is adept at stepping into “big shoes” and thriving in roles that demand responsibility. But they’ll probably need lots of coaching. | Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

“True Pragmatists”

For all their idealism and commitments to social justice and climate activism, money is still important to young people. And given what they’ve experienced in their lives, how could it not be?

As Courtney Kajikawa, a Gen Xer and senior VP and manager at First Hawaiian Bank, wrote in her 2023 thesis report for Pacific Coast Banking School, major political, economic and social events, known as “period effects,” have had a profound impact on Generation Z.

“Period effects like the Great Recession, the pandemic and the current inflationary environment have made Hawai‘i Gen Zers feel more financially insecure,” she writes in “Brain Drain to Brain Gain.”

Some had parents who lost their jobs during the Great Recession and the pandemic, and some Gen Zers did too. Others struggled to find employment as they graduated from high school and college into a challenging economy.

In writing her thesis, Kajikawa ran focus groups to gather Gen Z perspectives in Hawai‘i. She says that young people understand how financially precarious their lives are, and the insecurity weighs heavily on them.

“They’re really concerned about, ‘How am I going to pay off my debt? How am I going to afford a place to live? How am I going to save for retirement?’ ” Kajikawa explains in an interview.

“I see Gen Z as ambitious and driven. … It just requires more coaching and more time with managers and supervisors, and more empathy on our part. We need to ditch the ‘Oh, kids these days’ attitude and meet them where they are.”

— Courtney Kajikawa, Gen Xer and Senior VP and Manager, First Hawaiian Bank

Hawai‘i residents ages 20 to 24 earn an average of just $40,200 a year, which is far too little to survive independently. For those with student loan debt, the burdens are even heavier.

These economic concerns are felt worldwide, with 51% of Gen Zers saying they live paycheck to paycheck, according to the Deloitte Global 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. They may want work-life balance, but 46% of Gen Z respondents said they’ve taken second jobs to make ends meet, compared to 37% of Millennials.

In a Morning Consult survey, half of Gen Zers said they wanted to become entrepreneurs or start their own businesses. Many dream of being influencers, while others make money live-streaming themselves playing video games on Twitch, or selling T-shirts or “kitschy little things” on Instagram or TikTok, says Fragiao from UH Mānoa. He says one of his friends left a job he hated and devoted himself to painting; he now sells his artwork online.

Data from McKinsey & Company shows that Gen Zers are more likely to be self-employed or working gig jobs than older workers, but 56% of them would prefer to have permanent positions. Like most people, they’re looking for stable paychecks.

Gen Zer Josie Dang, a rising junior studying health care management at UH West O‘ahu, agonizes over whether to take on her family’s full-service salon in ‘Aiea when she graduates, or keep studying for an MBA, or look for a professional job with regular pay.

Her father arrived in Hawai‘i as a refugee from Vietnam, and he started his business from the ground up. Dang says he and her stepmother work constantly, leaving her home to cook, clean and take care of her younger sister. She’s seen how owning your own business doesn’t always bring the freedom and flexibility her generation seeks.

She says she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful or be a disappointment, and that she knows she should take him up on the offer of taking over the family business. Instead, she says she “just goes back and forth. … Honestly, a 9 to 5 with a high salary is looking kind of good.”

Chang, from the Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders, believes that financial stability will guide many Gen Zer decisions.

“They’re true pragmatists,” she says. “A lot of employers think they need to put out the right messaging when it comes to political and social issues, and I think that’s true to a degree. But in the end, I think that the priority will be financial.”

Why Move Out?

In Hawai‘i, many young adults deal with the high cost of living by living at home. This multigenerational arrangement, long popular here, is growing across the country, with nearly 16% of Millennials (ages 28 to 43) living with their parents in 2022, according to U.S. census figures.

But the CTL leadership team wonders if the arrangement can be too cozy and interfere with Gen Zers’ growth and independence. They say the stigma of living at home is gone, and the motivation to leave is weak.

“Gen Z has a much higher desire to live at home, but there are things you learn by not being at home, so they have knowledge gaps,” says Chang.

High school teacher Nakamura, a Gen Xer, says she grudgingly stayed home after college, but she paid rent and saved to move out as soon as she could. Ramelb, a Gen Zer, still lives with her family and says both she and her family members love it. Still, she’s saving to live on her own one day.

At 26, Bernardo-Flores recently left his family home and moved into a rental in Honolulu. His mother didn’t want him to go, but after high school at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama, college at Chaminade University and a job downtown, the commute from Waipahu had become unbearable.

His father questioned why he was renting and not buying, like he had done as a young man. The house, Bernardo-Flores says, cost less than a tenth of the price today.

For Alexa, being away from home is worth it, for now. She recently moved into a small studio apartment in Kaka‘ako and is paying more than she’d like to, but she says she was tired of being treated like a child. “It’s hard to have your own life and live at home,” she says.

The decision to rent wasn’t easy, and she says she’s still “testing the waters” before deciding whether it’s really worth the money to live on her own.

Let’s Fix Things Around Here

Lizardo from the Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i loves many things about Gen Zers, such as their social media skills and their sensitivity to what he calls “the isms”: racism, sexism, homophobia – they’re able to navigate those in ways that other generations aren’t able to, and to really be delicate but also very fierce.”

While the subtleties of talking about identity are clear for Gen Z, the nuances of communicating across generations are much less so. “They’re not afraid to push boundaries and share what they’re thinking about the workplace very quickly and easily,” before they’ve built trust and rapport with older colleagues, Lizardo says.

He coaches them in understanding the workplace culture before trying to change it, and improving their communication skills, such as writing business emails without using texting shorthand.

At First Hawaiian Bank, where 16% of the workforce – over 300 employees – are Gen Zers, Sherri Okinaga, a senior VP and head of the Organizational Effectiveness Division, embraces their energy, adaptability and what she calls “resilient risk-taking.”

“Seasoned employees want to focus on why policies and procedures exist and how existing programs came to be, whereas the younger generation is questioning, ‘Why do we have to do it that way?’” says Okinaga, a Gen Xer. “They’re reinventing work in a different way, using more AI and digital tools.”

Okinaga is working to make the bank “an employer of choice” among young people – and reexamining some of the traditional practices in the process. As nearly half the employees are Gen Zers and Millennials, and the executive team is made up of soon-to-retire Gen Xers and Boomers, she sees it as an imperative.

“Employers who are really galvanizing the Gen Z energy and creativity, by hearing their voices in the design of future work, are going to be the winners in the war for talent,” she says. “If we keep doing what we’re doing today, we will be out of business.”

The bank provides opportunities for young adults to learn, grow and lead, she says, and creates benefits and programs that appeal to them. For example, there are flexible hybrid work options; cross-mentoring that lets younger people coach older colleagues on technical skills; cohort-based learning programs to help them feel connected; and a quarterly awards program designed by younger staff and rolled out on social media.

Award winners are treated to dinner with the entire C-suite – an exercise in flattened hierarchies. “Employees can be in maintenance, in facilities, security guards, anyone,” says Okinaga. “It brings everybody closer and says every contribution matters.”

Image: AI & Jeff Sanner

What’s Next for Me?

Employee engagement lies at the core of any business’s success: Do people care about their jobs and do they try to do their best work?

Gallup polls say mostly not. In 2023, Gen Z engagement in the workplace dropped from 40% to 35%, and 14% of Gen Z employees were considered seriously disengaged.

The status quo isn’t going to work anymore, says Bernardo-Flores, the private banker and Gen Zer. Companies can’t expect young employees to do the same job for the same company, decade after decade, as his father did. Gen Zers want more than that, he says.

“We have an unusual labor market right now,” says Chang. “It’s important for employers to know Gen Z wants work-life balance, meaningful work and high salary. I think that expectations of really wanting all three are going to create demands on a lot of employers.”

And many Gen Zers are doing quite well for themselves. The Economist noted that the U.S. has more than 6,000 Gen Z chief executives and 1,000 Gen Z politicians. And many Gen Zers in Hawai‘i are defying generational stereotypes and quickly climbing the company ladder. But even as they do, they feel pressure to dispel others’ perceptions.

Bernardo-Flores says his father encouraged his kids to go to college so they’d have more opportunities than he did. His mother wanted them to find stable jobs with well-established organizations. The values of his parents shaped his own choices, he says.

After graduating from Chaminade in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, he moved from his part-time teller job with First Hawaiian into a full-time role. From there, he soon moved into the position of private banker, complete with a Bishop Street office with a view.

He says many of his peers started intensive training at the bank, then abandoned it after a few months. The fallout trickles down to people like him, who love their jobs. He says he appreciates the mixture of autonomy and guidance he’s given, as well as long-term pathways.

“I feel like as a Generation Zer it’s harder for me to gain that trust, to let my employer understand that I’m committed, I’m different from these other guys and gals that maybe weren’t,” he says.

Alexa, the operations manager, agrees that being one of the only Gen Zers among older colleagues means constantly having to prove herself. She says she works hard, at a high level, to combat low expectations, while given little support.

Despite her efforts, she finds it frustrating when she’s not taken seriously or left out of conversations. “There’s an attitude of, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m not really going to pay attention to what you’re saying,’ ” she says.

The sense of disillusionment with the adult world of working full time, paying bills and trying to stay afloat is leading her to question her prospects in Hawai‘i, the place where she was born and raised and had never wanted to leave.

“The world has changed. Older generations will say, ‘You just need to get your foot in the door and take any job you can.’ It doesn’t really happen like that anymore. You have to have so much experience and education to even get a job. … We need more opportunities for younger people to gain that experience.”

— Alexa, Gen Zer and an operations manager at a well-known Hawai‘i organization

“But the reality is there just aren’t many opportunities. It’s much too expensive, and the amount of work you need to do to live is not sustainable.” She’s looking at options, such as graduate school, working on the mainland – anything to escape a narrow, constrictive future.

While Bernardo-Flores says he’s committed, he’s also practical and ambitious – two traits that Gen Zers aren’t always known for, at least not yet.

“Money isn’t always the driving factor for us,” he says. “It’s the idea that we’re going to be recognized for our work, that the work we’re doing is high value, and that there’s long-term success waiting for us. If we don’t see that in the job, then we definitely won’t commit ourselves fully to it.”

Keohokalole emphasized that recruiting people who identify as LGBTQ+ is one part of a larger necessary discussion on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace, DEIB. The following excerpt from their discussion explains how the two concepts are importantly related.

Guay: It’s clear that strategic recruiting to build diversity in Hawai‘i’s workplaces does have a role in this equation – but it can’t be done in isolation, right?

Keohokalole: Right. Bringing more diverse perspectives into the workplace through recruiting is the right thing to do. It’s just not the only thing organizations need to do around DEIB, and it’s often not the first thing they need to do. In the DEIB conversation, the organization needs to first fundamentally think about who it is and who it represents. For example, take an arts organization whose board members were used to holding exclusive private fundraising soirees extended to wealthy donors who enjoy art. One day the organization looked around and realized those actions were out of alignment with their desire to increase access to art for kids who are from underserved communities.

That realization led the executive director to rethink their board makeup, and start to rethink who they fundamentally are, from the top-down – their mission, values, leadership and alignment all the way through. That’s the real work we’re talking about. It’s not just about recruiting.

Guay: Got it. But it feels like if we don’t start bringing in diverse perspectives, we’ll never get there. What comes first? It feels like a chicken and egg conversation.

Keohokalole: It goes back to the question: What problem is your organization trying to solve through DEIB work? Instead of asking about recruiting a certain number of LGBTQ+ employees or employees of any underrepresented identity for that matter, a better first question might be, how well does an organization’s workforce reflect the communities their mission says they exist to serve.

Bringing in more diverse voices is the right thing to do, but if they are in the small minority numbers-wise, it’s going to be an uphill struggle. All of us can think of times when we had to advocate for an alternative perspective and got pushback. That happens a lot for people who are brought in to support diversity efforts and then their perspective gets dismissed.

On the flip side, leaders need to be careful not to hold up an individual as a representative of every voice out there. Not only is that unfair, it’s tokenism.

Guay: Sometimes diversity recruiting efforts are criticized because there’s a belief it requires lowering qualifications to recruit diverse populations.

Keohokalole: Right. And actually, no one is asking you to lower your qualifications to diversify your workplace. In fact, recruiting for a diverse workforce requires you, in some ways, to become more stringent about certain position qualifications – rethinking them to be aligned to what your organization really needs.

For example, if you’ve got people whose job it is to build community relationships, then they likely need experience engaging with the community here in Hawai‘i, right? To do that, they will likely need to be grounded in the community they serve and able to speak the language of those stakeholders. It’s not enough to just say, “Must have X years of education and know about Hawai‘i’s communities.” You’ll need to rethink the need for that person’s connections, the quality of relationships they bring, etc. Those are the qualifications you’re looking for.

It’s not at all about lowering qualifications, it’s about redefining them intentionally to garner a workforce that reflects who the organization serves.

Guay: One strategy we hear a lot about are referral programs. Are they helpful or harmful when it comes to supporting DEIB in organizations?

Keohokalole: The risk with blanket referral programs is that they incentivize folks to recruit people within their own network – who likely have similar experiences and perspectives. This can reinforce a lack of diversity by relying on the networks of the dominant demographic in the organization, and can proliferate the status quo, making it systemically difficult to break the mold.

Another way to go about it would be to create specific referral programs for what you’re looking for and target the program to those most likely to have those skills or backgrounds in their network.

Guay:: The discussion of strategic referrals brings up the relationship between fairness, equality and equity. How are these concepts related?

Keohokalole: Equity is about understanding there have been historical imbalances our society has accepted as “just the way it is,” and we are now trying to address those imbalances through our actions and decisions.

An example was an organization that recently completed its performance reviews and was now figuring out employee pay increases. The organization realized it couldn’t afford across-the-board raises. Instead, they deferred highly compensated employees’ raises in favor of providing increases to the lowest-paid employees. They made that decision in the name of equity. Was it equal? No. But was it equitably fair? Yes.

Equity is about understanding what the problem is, what’s created the problem historically, and then what’s our role in addressing it systemically – versus focusing on isolated activities or tasks.

Guay: It strikes me this conversation about building DEIB is similar to building other fundamentals of an organization’s culture. An organization that values service, for example, can’t just say they value service. That value has to come alive through their actions.

Similarly, the commitment to DEIB needs to live and be reinforced regularly through practices, policies and systems. Specific tactics to support the desired culture include training, supportive benefit programs and employee resource groups. Organizations should invest in training staff on their DEIB values, including specific policies and practices that support diversity. Managers need to deeply understand the issues surrounding DEIB in the workplace and be ambassadors of the values.

Employers should ensure inclusivity with employee benefits, offering gender-affirming health care benefits or transgender-inclusive policies for parental leave. Employee resource groups, which are voluntary employee-led groups that serve traditionally underrepresented employees, can provide a supportive community for employees to mitigate for tokenism.

Keohokalole: Exactly. A healthy workplace is the outcome of organizational DNA that empowers, respects, supports and engages its employees. These values are reflected in a myriad of ways within the organization – through policies, procedures, and systems.

Too often, DEIB efforts are set aside as “HR initiatives” and recruiting is an action taken in support of the overall experience for an employee. This is what we mean when we say instead of starting with recruiting, start with what you’re recruiting them into.

DEIB is not a certification or an achievement. This work doesn’t have a finish line. It’s a mindset that informs the way we approach the mission of our organization. It’s an ongoing journey to continually assess our alignment, course correcting as we go, and getting better every day through intentional focus and transformation.

Where does innovation come from and how can creativity be fostered?

Matt Ridley, author of “How Innovation Works,” offers some answers. “Innovation happens when people are free to think, experiment and speculate,” he writes.

“It happens when people can trade with each other. It happens where people are relatively prosperous, not desperate. It is somewhat contagious. It needs investment.”

But we wanted specifically to know how innovation and creativity can happen more often in Hawai‘i, so Hawaii Business Magazine spoke with and listened to local artisans, art festival organizers, creative consultants, and even political leaders and businesspeople. We heard about how to foster creativity, and about the shared spaces, technological infrastructure and information sharing that might help Hawai‘i become a more innovative place.

Don’t Try It Alone

“When you have an idea for something, something that you want to make happen, whether a business or event or anything, you have to understand that you don’t have all the skill sets necessary to do it alone,” says Jasper Wong, founder of Pow! Wow!, an international mural arts festival that hosts events each year in Kaka‘ako.

“It’s important to look at your network and outside of that to see who would be willing to help, who you can sort of partner with to make something a reality,” says Wong. “I’ve always done that. I’m able to recognize my own flaws and my own shortcomings, so I’ve always reached out to people.”

For example, says Wong: “With our festivals, I’m not a person who is familiar with planning concerts. When we need to do one, I’m either reaching out to Philip (Pendleton) or Matty (Hazelgrove) at Bamp or someone who has vast experience.

“Early on, for the very first Pow! Wow! that we did in Hong Kong, I was reaching out to a lot of people for help,” he says. “All of my collaborations have the same mindset.”

Finding Good Collaborations

“Not everyone is easy to work with,” says Wong. “You have to do your due diligence to figure out who is good to work with … keep your doors open but also scrutinize the people you’re working with, meet them in person and see if you vibe with them.

“As you know more people and you become friends, it’s easier to work with them,” says Wong. But in addition to working with long-term partners, it’s important to reach out to and collaborate with the next generation. “To be honest, I just don’t have as much energy as I did in my 20s,” says Wong, who turned 38 this year. “As I get older, I realize that there are a lot of entrepreneurs and artists, passionate individuals who could be the future.”

Sustaining the Work

Wong says his work is sustained by a belief in the value of bringing people together to create.

“I don’t get paid (for Pow! Wow!),” he says. “It’s always been a passion project. It’s a belief that art can have a big impact, that you can bring people together and build bridges both locally and internationally.” Similarly, Wong doesn’t receive payment for running Lana Lane Studios, an artist collective in Kaka‘ako. “I manage and run that space, but I don’t get paid to do that. I try to keep the cost low so artists can benefit from it.

“When you’re able to bring a lot of people together and they’re all like-minded and share similar passions, then these things can’t fail because something amazing will happen no matter what,” says Wong. “I just have to provide the space and the platform. All they need is that push and to be together. I’m never really worried about things failing.”

Lana Lane in Kaka‘ako | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

Pandemic Trials and Triumphs

In May, Bishop Museum opened an exhibit curated by Wong that featured more than 160 Pow! Wow! artists. Though Wong has more than a decade of experience organizing exhibitions and festivals, he says that exhibit was his toughest yet.

“The hardest part was the fact that I had to plan it during a pandemic. There were lots of variables that I had no control over.”

Some featured international artists couldn’t come. There was an art supply and paint shortage. Shipping costs doubled. Some artists had to drop out after their materials and plane tickets had been purchased. Looming over all these concerns was uncertainty about the exhibit itself: Would the opening be compromised by safety concerns?

“At the end of the day, you can’t account for all the issues that will arise. There are always going to be fires. It’s less how you can plan and account for everything and more so how you’re able to react to issues,” says Wong. “We can plan all we want. It will take years, and even at the end it may not be smooth.”

But the exhibit did succeed. Hundreds came for opening day, and Wong says it was one of the most meaningful events he’s organized, in part because of the pandemic’s unique circumstances.

“For a lot of the artists we worked with, the last time they traveled and were together with other people was in February (2020), just before the lockdowns happened,” he says. “They haven’t traveled or seen other artists for almost a year and a half. For a lot of them, it meant a lot to come together to paint and create. And it meant a lot to me too.”

Collaboration and Colocation

An exhibit or art festival is a temporary gathering, but Wong also has experience creating permanent institutions. In 2012, he co-founded Lana Lane Studios with Kamea Hadar and Jeff Gress.

The Lana Lane collective offers low-rent studio space for artists. It’s housed in a nondescript corrugated steel warehouse in Kaka‘ako. (The large mural on the entrance would be a dead giveaway anywhere else, but not in this mural-filled neighborhood.) As you enter, you face a two-tier hodgepodge of studio spaces.

Each studio has its own aesthetic, in part because each was assembled with random materials from Re-use Hawai‘i, a local nonprofit that deconstructs buildings to recover usable building material. The studios have also been remodeled over time by their tenants.

Current tenants include tattoo artist “Bad News Becca” Roach (@badnewsbecca); Matt and Roxy Ortiz, a husband-and-wife art duo who work under the name Wooden Wave (@wooden_wave); oil painter Patrick Mizumoto (@paintedpatrick); and Mei Day (@meidayhawaii), a floral design studio run by Paiko founder Tamara Rigney. Jack Soren, Mark Visaya, MelonJames and Gary Draws Fish share a space upstairs in The Helm Studio (@thehelm.studio).

Collaborations between tenants are frequent. Sometimes, it’s informal help with one project. Other times, business partnerships are formed.

Around the Water Cooler

“I don’t know if it was strategy or not, but they put the water cooler right by the bathroom,” says Gavin Murai (@reckonshop), a graphic designer who began working out of Lana Lane in 2012. Conversations around the water cooler and spontaneous interactions throughout the warehouse can spark collaborations and partnerships.

Since 2015, Murai has been half of the team behind Formidably Impressed, a line of original hand-lettered letterpress greeting cards. Traditional offerings are supplemented by more contemporary takes on the greeting card: “gratz, lol” for recent grads, “TANKS EH!” for the ones you appreciate, and slightly profane greetings for customers tired of the same old Hallmark cards.

“We would be here until like 1 or 2 in the morning working on our own things in our own studios,” says Cherish Fuller, the other half of the team, a letterpress printer and owner of Jiwa Jiwa Press (@jiwajiwapress).

In 2015, she needed a design for Mother’s Day. “I wanted to take greeting cards to the next level, but I can’t draw,” says Fuller. “I had seen that Gavin did a lot of sign painting and murals, and I really liked his work.”

She asked Murai to create a design, and their original collaboration melded their styles: Fuller’s messages were crass and her colors bright while Murai’s colors were muted and his designs serious.

The cards sold well at Mori Hawai‘i, so Fuller asked Murai for a more permanent arrangement. Murai was noncommittal, but Fuller insisted.

“He was like no worries, like maybe we’ll trade or figure something out,” she says. “I was like, ‘No, you’re going to do this. I’m going to be busting out like 20 cards every season. It needs to be a legit thing,’ so we just decided to partner instead.”

Gavin Murai and Cherish Fuller in the Formidably Impressed studio at Lana Lane. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

“Fun Administrative Stuff”

Murai says talent is important in the art business, but it helps to return phone calls and perform other mundane tasks. Academic art education sometimes neglects the business side of art, he says. “They teach you the technical skills and all that, but they kind of leave out the fact that you need to eat.

“You have to have a perfect blend of being able to be aspirational and creative, but at the same time, be realistic,” says Murai. “And open to critique,” adds Fuller.

Murai says that at Lana Lane, he’s able to help younger artists with the business side of making art: tracking time and invoicing and “all the fun administrative stuff.” In exchange, he says, the younger artists help him with social media strategy.

The Magic Mix

“This is the best studio I’ve ever worked out of,” says Fuller, who previously worked out of several art studios in Seattle and Portland. She says those studios were shut off, with minimal collaboration.

Those studios also lacked diversity of media, favoring painters and printmakers. Fuller says that having artists working in different media on-site is an asset. For example, Murai and Fuller sometimes work with photographer Chris Balidio (@bonfire_baelids) for product photography.

Often, the best ideas emerge naturally, born in conversation around the water cooler. “We’re bouncing ideas and questions off each other all the time,” says Fuller. “We have a really good set of artists in the studio.”

“You have to have a perfect blend of being able to be aspirational and creative, but at the same time, be realistic,”

Gavin Murai, Graphic Designer

Innovation Economy

Access to space and mentorship are two key factors in fostering innovation, according to Georja Skinner, chief officer of the Creative Industries Division of the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

“In order to have a thriving innovation and creative economy, you have to have workforce and talent development, you need spaces or infrastructure – including broadband in regional communities so we distribute this opportunity equally – and access to capital and mentorship,” she says.

Creative Lab Hawai‘i, a Creative Industries Division program, was founded in 2012. It focuses on immersive programs for creatives (similar to entrepreneur and startup accelerators), including playwrights, script writers, producers, web-series creators, musicians, animators, mobile app developers and fashion designers.

“It’s an accelerator for media and music, now moving into visual arts,” says Skinner. “The program develops the business skills and hones the craft of artists in those sectors to be able to compete in the global intellectual property marketplace.”

In addition to interactive immersives and workshops, Creative Lab also hosts informational events, including free legal webinars. In June 2021, the lab held webinars on option agreements, work-for-hire agreements and collaboration agreements.

Over the years, Creative Lab participants said that they needed public spaces where they could collaborate: writing scripts, working on projects, practicing pitches. Skinner says that because most creatives in the state work day jobs and hustle their art on the side, few have access to dedicated space for their artistic projects.

So the Creative Industries Division partnered with the Hawaii Technology Development Corp. and issued a request for proposal to address this shortage of space and infrastructure. Bizgenics Foundation, a nonprofit, won the bid to design and build a pilot project to address the shortage of space and infrastructure for multimedia production. The result is Id8 Studios, a cutting-edge soundstage and production environment housed in the Entrepreneurs Sandbox in Kaka‘ako.

Creative or Insane?

“Very few creators start with the target audience. They start with their own inner view of the world, and then they go and find an audience,” says Steve Sue, a creative consultant and chairman of Bizgenics Foundation.

“I think you have to be a little bit insane to be an entrepreneur, and I include myself in that class of people. But that insanity, that fresh look at the world is what’s needed. … To have the right fresh view, you have to have an immense amount of knowledge. You have to be extremely multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary to succeed in the space.

“Most people don’t make it in innovation because they don’t know what they don’t know,” Sue says. “Hawai‘i actually suffers from that in significant ways because our frame of reference here is very tight. For example, we don’t have a lot of industries here that the Mainland has.”

In addition to the lack of industry exposure, Hawai‘i creatives lack some of the resources and infrastructure needed to produce at a high level, says Sue.

In the book “Outliers,” author Malcolm Gladwell argues that Bill Gates would not have achieved his phenomenal success as a software developer without having had access to large computers as a teenager, years before personal computers existed. This is obvious to the point of truism, and it illustrates the rationale behind projects like Id8 Studios, which seek to provide technological infrastructure that a lone individual cannot afford.

“Id8 is a tremendous opportunity for this state. … It’s a pretty darn good starting point, and with a little bit of gear in here, this could really rock and roll, and it would really bring our people up to that full capacity creative level that would be every bit commensurate with anywhere else in the world, LA for example, or New York,” says Sue.

“If we don’t put in the gear, then we cut ourselves short.” Industry moves fast, he says, and “our people will be literally second-class citizens because they didn’t have the time on the xR stage or with the motion capture suits or whatever is the latest, greatest VR technology. But if we fund this well, we have every chance because our people here are proven creatives.”

Information Wants to be Free

In the information age, resources are not always physical. Specialized knowledge can sometimes be more valuable than gold, but unlike gold, sharing it does not deplete one’s own stock. This insight is behind one local effort to share best practices on technology adoption and use.

Michelle Cheung has a history of leveraging technology to create value. Before moving to Hawai‘i, she worked as a software developer, data analyst and technical analyst for Citibank and has also worked for the Bank of Tokyo.

When she moved to Hawai‘i in 2010, she worked for Locations, a local real estate company. As head of technology for a small firm, she saw that her efforts to integrate technology “actually had a lot of impact on the business,” a marked shift from her roles in massive companies.

Cheung says this experience in helping a local business adopt cutting-edge technological solutions helped prepare her for her current role as director of the TRUE Initiative – Technology Readiness User Evaluation. TRUE is a nonprofit initiative of the Hawai‘i Executive Collaborative.

Michelle Cheung, director of the TRUE Initiative. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

“How do we help other organizations adopt technology so they can be more competitive, more sustainable, so that they can compete on a global scale rather than focusing on Hawai‘i?” she asks. “That’s my mission. And we can do that by showcasing the possibility of what technology can do through our use cases.”

One use case is “AI for Call Centers,” a case study of Central Pacific Bank’s move to an Amazon Connect-powered call center.

“We were up and running in no time,” says Paul Yonamine, CEO of Central Pacific Bank and co-chair with Island Holdings President Rob Nobriga of the TRUE Initiative. “We have dramatically increased customer satisfaction by minimizing wait time.

“We don’t necessarily have a shortage on call center operators anymore because we’re leveraging technology,” he says. “That in turn is saving us a lot of money. I can have my operators spend more time, not just on incoming calls where they’re trying to answer questions. They could spend more time on outgoing, outbound calls to try and promote our credit cards or checking accounts.

“Adrienne Chee, our CIO, worked with AWS to develop that solution,” he says. Since then, Yonamine says that Chee has helped three other companies to implement the solution.

Late Adopters

Yonamine, who used to be president of IBM Japan, says Hawai‘i is similar to Japan in its reluctance to embrace technology. “As advanced as Japan may appear, they were actually really late adopters of technology,” he says. For example, “they’re just embracing cloud technologies today.”

When Yonamine took over as chair-man and CEO of Central Pacific Financial Corp., parent of Central Pacific Bank, he found the bank was still using Lotus Notes as its email client, and most software was on-premises. “We did not embrace a lot of cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) type offerings,” says Yonamine, whose tenure as CEO has involved numerous efforts to modernize and digitize the bank’s operations. “Today, we’re almost 100% on the cloud.”

Yonamine visited the Entrepreneurs Sandbox before it opened in 2019 and met with Len Higashi, acting director of the Hawaii Technology Development Corp. Yonamine says he suggested the state agency and business community “use this facility to all come together and use existing technologies that already are proven and have a track record of ROI, and let’s help other companies in Hawai‘i use them.”

Now, 11 local companies, including CPB, Servco, and Pacxa, rent space in the Sand-box. COVID-19 precluded large events in person, so TRUE hosted more than two dozen virtual events before the Sandbox reopened in June 2021.

Public-Private Partnerships

On June 23, 2021, TRUE organized a hybrid event at the Sandbox, with a few guests in-person and a live Zoom broad-cast. The event featured speeches by Yonamine; Gov. David Ige; Mike McCartney, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism; Edward Ontai, president of DataHouse Consulting; and Peter Dames, executive VP of Servco.

“People + Collaboration + Technology = Innovation,” said McCartney. “People make things happen. … We’re the competitive advantage.” He went on to stress that the way collaboration is approached determines whether it succeeds. “Hawai‘i has really good values. It’s communication, it’s common understanding and it’s building trust.”

Ige said participation in the digital economy is vital for Hawai‘i, and the need for innovation was underscored by the pandemic. “We need to accelerate the pace of adoption because we’ve seen over and over again, if you’re not in the digital economy, then you’re really not in the economy,” he said.

“Most people don’t make it in innovation because they don’t know what they don’t know,”

Steve Sue, Chairman, Bizgenics Foundation

A to B, Not A to Z

Yonamine says to help the ALICE population, it’s important to create more high-paying, tech-enabled jobs in Hawai‘i. However, current efforts to foster technological innovation reflect unrealistic expectations, he says. ALICE stands for asset limited, income constrained (yet) employed.

“In the past, we’ve had many efforts to start up innovation centers, and it’s been centered around startups. … I hope one day we’ll have a lot of successful startups out of Hawai‘i, but realistically, we have no venture capital,” he says. And despite the quality of our universities, Yonamine says, we don’t have an institution that can provide for us what Stanford provides to Silicon Valley.

“Hawai‘i shouldn’t be trying to reinvent the wheel,” he says. “Let’s just go out and learn how to use existing technologies and drive ROI not just for the private sector but for the public sector as well.”

The key to sustaining innovation is to make it profitable, says Yonamine. Hawai‘i, he says, has a lot of private and public sector organizations that suffer from inefficiency and redundancy because they underutilize technology. These organizations will commit to innovative projects when they see evidence of a return, he says.

“Naturally, people will come together with exciting ideas, especially if the people who are driving it have a proven track record,” says Yonamine, crediting Peter Dames of Servco and Cheung with drawing organizations into the TRUE Initiative.

Yonamine says two types of companies should participate in TRUE:

• Cutting-edge local companies that can share their knowledge.
• Late adopters that may be reluctant because they were burned by technology in the past.

“You don’t buy technology today like you used to buy it,” Yonamine says, referring to the rise of software as a service providers that offer off-the-shelf business solutions. “Because you don’t invest so much, you can try it and if it doesn’t work, you just move on to the next thing.

“We’re not just dreamers. We have a track record. But the key to keeping it sustainable is results.”

“Without local ingredients, (Meadow Gold) doesn’t really have a long-term sustainable position in the market,” says Bahman Sadeghi, a Hawai‘i Island dairy farmer who bought the Meadow Gold brand and most of its Hawai‘i assets in April 2020.

“So, we have to go back to basics and say as a local processor, we have to produce local ingredients, local products. And therefore, we have to invest in local dairies, for example. But before you invest in local dairies, you have to invest in local feed because without local feed, local dairies cannot exist. We can’t depend on Mainland feed – bring in their feed to feed the cows here to make milk. We have to produce the feed here.”

Sadeghi did not buy Meadow Gold’s former 2-acre headquarters on Sheridan Street near Ala Moana Center, but instead acquired a new facility in Waipahu. He is also planning to expand Meadow Gold’s Hilo plant to increase production.

His blueprint doesn’t end there: Meadow Gold is finalizing plans to release a line of almond, soy, oats and macadamia nut beverages, made with local ingredients, Sadeghi says. Megahn Chun, marketing manager for Meadow Gold, hopes these products will be on sale by the end of 2021 or early 2022.

Making Meadow Gold’s ingredients and products in the Islands means more jobs and money in the local economy, Chun says. A new cohort of interns is part of Meadow Gold’s vision of keeping Hawai‘i’s people interested in developing local agriculture, she says.

Sadeghi also wants to continue Meadow Gold’s long history of supporting the community.

“We’re involved with the University of Hawai‘i athletics department and working with local organizations to support them and create partnerships – for example, the Children’s Discovery Center, working with Pow! Wow! and we did a campaign with POG for the vaccination process. So, any opportunity to give back to the community, I think I see that as one of the pillars of Meadow Gold’s missions, to be engaged and continue to invest in its partnerships.”

POG is Meadow Gold’s popular passion, orange and guava beverage.

2022 will be Meadow Gold’s 125th birthday in the Islands, a reminder of the importance of emphasizing local ingredients and production.

“It’s really to continue working on sourcing lands, so that we can grow local feed and create more dairies and increase dairy processing here in Hawai‘i because they all work in tandem with each other,” says Chun.

“If you don’t have a processor, where is the dairy going to process our stuff? … If you don’t have the feed, where does the dairy have to go and get their food? From the Mainland, which is super expensive. So, all of these three things need to be set up so that we can create a sustainable blueprint for Hawai‘i.”

Tending to the environment, social justice and responsible governance are long-held values that grow out of our culture in Hawaiʻi. Mālama (stewardship), ho‘ohanohano (respectfulness) and kuleana (responsibility) have always guided our actions – personally and in business.

Yet the pressure on businesses of all sizes surrounding these issues is escalating. Employees and prospective hires want to know where a company’s leadership stands on many policy issues – some having little or nothing to do with the business itself. Customers want to know about a company’s values and the behavior of its leadership before they buy. Investors want reassurance that a business is doing more than turning a healthy profit; they also expect it to contribute positively to society.

HEI and other large local companies, such as Alexander & Baldwin, First Hawaiian Bank, Hawaiian Airlines and Matson, have begun publishing reports that disclose their policies, actions and performance on environmental, social and governance issues, or ESG. When we first began sharing this information in 2020, we were one of the first companies in Hawai‘i to do it. More and more, this relatively new concept has become expected as part of operating a business.

Even small and medium- size businesses need to think about these matters as they compete for talent, customers and investments.

Here are issues to consider:

• Environment: How is your business planning for and mitigating the harm from climate change, and supporting our state’s goals of a 100% renewable energy and carbon-neutral economy by 2045? Are you increasing your energy efficiency? Are you using – or even generating – energy from renewable sources like solar or wind? Are you encouraging employees to use public transportation or low-emission vehicles, and do you provide electric vehicle charging at your facilities? If you have fleet vehicles, how many are low or zero emission?
• Social Justice: How is your business working to overcome systemic bias in our society? Are you actively promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in your hiring and promotion practices? Does your employee base – and your leadership team – reflect the diversity of Hawai‘i? Do you offer products and services that address low to moderate income residents’ needs? Are you serving the interests of disadvantaged communities?
• Responsible Governance: How do your company’s decision-making structures and processes promote ethical, sound decision-making? Do you have robust systems for identifying, monitoring, managing and mitigating risks? Do your compensation programs incentivize the right goals and behaviors? Do you have a clear code of conduct and mechanisms for reporting and investigating potential violations? What are your policies regarding political activity?
• Accountability: How are you sharing the answers to these questions, and holding your business accountable for making progress? Do you discuss ESG-related challenges at employee meetings? Do you publish your values and ESG performance at your place of business, or on your website? Do you – like HEI and a growing number of other companies – publish an annual report on your ESG performance?

Being deliberate and open about your business’s ESG initiatives shows your contributions to a more resilient and sustainable Hawai‘i. Yet there are also practical reasons for focusing on ESG: Doing so can help in debt financing efforts and increase employee engagement, customer loyalty and investor confidence. Ultimately, paying attention to ESG is good for your business, and it’s good for Hawai‘i.

This monthʻs expert:

Connie Lau
President and CEO, Hawaiian Electric Industries