Archives: November 2015

Parting Shot: The Fabric of Giving

Tuesday, 10:52 AM The Salvation Army 322 Sumner St., Iwilei   Mabel Kihamahana cuts and sews fabric to refurbish donated furniture at The Salvation Army in Honolulu. Each cushion takes her about 20 minutes to reupholster. Kihamahana’s 40th anniversary with The Salvation Army is this Dec. 26. Congratulations. Categories: Business & Industry, Careers, Lifestyle, Media, Nonprofit, Parting Shot

Turkey Hunt With a View

Justin Fagala of Pearl City holds the turkey while his son Christian holds the shotgun that bagged it. Hawaii Island’s Parker Ranch offers guided hunts of wild animals for one to four people. You can hunt goats and wild pigs any time of the year, but you can only hunt for wild turkeys during March. “Inexperienced and experienced hunters, including…

Kiteboarding for Everyone

If you have been admiring kiteboarding from afar, David Dorn says it’s time to try it yourself. Dorn is the owner of Action Sports Maui and has been teaching kiteboarding since 1997. Back then, he says, “It was more of an extreme sport with a radical reputation and, now, with our safe teaching techniques, it’s open to a wide demographic….

Talk Story with John Chamness

The nonprofit spends about $37 million a year to help Hawaii’s poorest people. Many of its services solve immediate needs, like hunger, but the Salvation Army is setting its sight on a new long-term initiative to stem poverty at its core. You assisted almost 117,300 people in Hawaii in 2014. Which group stands out most in your mind? We try…

Inside the Mind of an Entrepreneur

In the high-tech gold rush of modern Silicon Valley, the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success.” That’s how HBO describes its buzzy TV show, “Silicon Valley,” but is this characterization true? Ryan Louie shed some light on the issue in a paper recently published in the journal Academic Psychiatry. An M.D. and Ph.D. training…

Wider Panama Canal Won’t Affect Hawaii

The Panama Canal is being widened to accomodate bigger ships. Visible here are three tiers of locks, with vehicle carrier Lyra Leader in the Background. In April 2016, the Panama Canal Authority is slated to open an expanded, widened canal, doubling the capacity between the Atlantic and the Pacific. It will allow freighters carrying up to 14,000 containers to pass,…

Good Neighbors with Kevin Lockette: Support for Parkinson’s Patients

Photo: Courtesy of Kevin Lockette As a physical therapist and the co-owner of Ohana Pacific Rehabilitation Services in Kailua, Kevin Lockette has always been interested in people’s movement issues. He started one of the first fitness programs for disabled people in the 1990s and was a volunteer head coach for a U.S. team at the 1992 Paralympic Games. After accepting…

The Careerist: Going to Your Boss’s Boss

Is it ever appropriate to go to your boss’s boss to complain about your boss? Yes, no and maybe. Yes, if you have witnessed discrimination, sexual harassment, fraud, kickbacks, gross negligence, substance abuse or anything that would create a really difficult situation for your company. If your boss can’t or won’t respond appropriately to your complaint, you have no choice…

Staying Power

Hawaii’s oldest continuously operated companies and nonprofits include many familiar names and a few lesser-known ones.  Here are 11 enduring ranches, churches, schools and other organizations, each with a history that stretches back at least 165 years. Mokuaikaua Church Mokuaikaua Church: Based on its founding in 1820, this church in Kailua-Kona could be considered Hawaii’s oldest continuously operated organization. It…

Global Dealmakers

Think your commute is tough? Next time you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour, spare a thought for Brad Smith. The founder of Kahala Capital Advisers, a private investment firm, and Kahala Aviation travels regularly to his offices in Tokyo, New York and Dublin. “Each time I get on a plane, it’s a week” away from home, he says. But…

Ocean-Friendly Bioplastics Made from Industrial Waste

Final bioplastic product: The Miss Sissi lamp. More info: tinyur.com/hnei-bioplastic UH researcher got help from microorganisms to invent green product The Creator Jian Yu didn’t set out to find a way to re-use organic waste. When he first moved to Hawaii in 2001 for a job at UH’s Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, the problem of plastic bags and other trash…

Carving is in his Bones

Like his father and grandfather, Inoke “Male” Pomale is a master carver. He works with local cow bones, bison bones from Montana, and fossilized mammoth and whale bones from Alaska and Siberia. Inoke “Male” Pomale says he comes from at least four generations of carvers. “When I was 9 or 10 years old, I’d watch my father create carvings in…

Ranking Hawaii’s Charities

Charity Navigator has been using the same method to rate the nation’s nonprofits since 2002. In this issue, Hawaii Business looks at the 27 local charities on the list. But it’s worth remembering that any such rating system, though valuable, is bound to have flaws. How do you compare charities with completely different missions? Is an organization that feeds the…

My Job: Sweet Spot

Jolanta Siwik is the regulatory and innovation manager at Hawaiian Host Job: Food scientist Experience: 15 years, two with Hawaiian Host Start: Jolanta Siwik majored in human nutrition in her native Poland, then got her master’s degree in food science from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. After working as a university researcher, then for a California supplement maker…

5 Steps to Turn Conflict Into Cooperation

Conflict in the workplace is natural and normal, says mediator Catherine Lampton. In fact, she says, avoiding conflict costs money. Research shows almost all terminations are due to unresolved conflict, and leaders spend up to half of every day dealing with it. Here’s how to turn potentially  destructive and expensive conflict into constructive conflict. 1. Be Prepared Suspend your point of…

The Story of Hawaii’s Lost Luggage

Brittany Thornton is an experienced interisland flyer. For five years, the licensed nurse lived on Kauai and would visit Oahu nearly every month to see friends, shop or work. Thornton would always check a large rolling suitcase, often half-empty, ready to fill with purchases. Checking and claiming her bag was never a hassle, until one afternoon flight from Lihue to…

Forever Changed

Iselle battered Pahoa, then lava threatened to overrun it. This sleepy Hawaii Island town persevered, as did most of its businesses, but many other things will never be the same PAHOA, Hawaii Island – Petra Wiesenbauer, owner of Hale Moana Bed and Breakfast for 15 years, lives month to month on her income, without large reserves to get through difficult times….

Letters to the Editor: November 2015

HECO’s Ownership Not the Crucial Factor More important is the utility’s skill and innovation in adapting to disruption in the electricity sector I appreciate the efforts of Hawaii Business and Dennis Hollier to dig deep into the complex issues of Hawaii’s evolving electricity system (latest story: “Who Should Own Hawaiian Electric,” October 2015). Electricity customers need to understand the important…