True Calling

During her senior year in college, when a friend approached Cara Yamaguchi Kakuda to ask her help in recovering some money she had invested in "some sort of cellular business," Kakuda responded the same way any other 20-something would have in the late '80s: "I said, 'Cellular … What is that? Is that like a makeup thing?' Then my friend explained to me that it was like a cordless phone that you can use in your car. Of course, I thought that was really cool, so I said why not - I'll help her sell some phones, get her money back and be on with it."

Photo: Karin Kovalsky

But Kakuda's foray into the then-novel world of cellular phones proved too rewarding for her to move on from. "Back then, cell phones were almost $2,000 each, so we'd sell a couple phones and close up shop and go shopping," she says. Things only got better when GTE Mobilnet, which wasn't doing a lot of direct sales at the time, stepped in and offered to help the University of Hawaii senior get an independent cell phone dealership off the ground by providing her advertising and resource support. By the time she turned 22, Kakuda's business, Cellular Distributors, had 21 employees and $1 million in gross annual sales.

Kakuda's early success prompted GTE Mobilnet to hire the young go-getter in 1995 to build its direct sales department. Within three months, Kakuda had achieved 300 percent of her plan to hire, train and build a team. Within six months, she was recruited by the newest competitor in the fast-growing cell-phone field, Voicestream, to be its district sales manager. "Because of Hawaii's high penetration rate for cell phone use, Voicestream decided to launch its service in Hawaii, and I was hired to start it up," says Kakuda. "I was the first person to be brought on, so I was involved with everything from picking the phones to building the sales force to choosing the carpets."

By this time, Kakuda had established herself as an old pro at building successful cellular phone companies from the ground up, so it didn't take long for the next cell phone provider to come calling, asking her to build out its Hawaii operations. In 1998, upon expiration of her non-compete agreement with Voicestream, 33-year-old Kakuda joined Nextel Partners Inc., the rural-market arm of Nextel Communications. As with GTE and Voicestream, it was Nextel's first entry into the Hawaii cellular market, and Kakuda was responsible for everything from setting rate plans to hiring employees.

But her core strength was really delivering strong customer service and sales - two things Kakuda says go hand in hand. "I believed that we could build a team of people who truly are the best in the market," says Kakuda. "So as a test, we raised the goals - their quotas - just for the Hawaii market, and it worked." Under Kakuda's management, annual sales per account executive grew from $5 million to $10 million each.

"Cara's people give her 150 percent, because she gives it back. When someone believes in you, it makes you want to work harder and Cara does that for her people," says Nextel Public Relations Manager Courtney Wells. "She really is an all-around great leader." The big wigs at Nextel Partners think so, as well. In January, Kakuda was promoted to area general manager - a title held by only eight other people in the company nationwide.

Kakuda loves her new position so much that not even the possibility of a merger with rival Sprint makes her nervous (at the time of this writing, Nextel Partners was not a part of the merger between Sprint and Nextel Communications). Says Kakuda: "I'm not worried about it at all. Not that I'm cocky about it, but our customers truly believe in us. They're loyal, passionate customers, so, for me, as long as we're doing our best to keep making them happy and continuing to find ways to help them communicate better, I'm happy."