Excellence in Business and Charitable Giving

First Hawaiian Bank’s 1,961 employees contributed 7,362 hours of their own time and $886,450 of their own money through a giving program called Kōkua Mai, with participation above 99%.

When I looked up from reading Kenn Nishihira’s life story, he was wiping away tears. His wife, Iris, was sitting beside him.

It was September, and I was sharing the stage with Hawaii Business Magazine publisher Kent Coules at the magazine’s Excellence in Business Awards, reading the story of one of the 30-plus honorees.

The words weren’t mine. They came from his nomination, written by Bobbie Medeiros of First Hawaiian Bank. Kenn started as a rodman in 1978, helped survey the H-3 freeway for the state, and joined the City and County of Honolulu in 1992. He earned his professional land surveyor’s license in 1996. Then, in 2000, he started KN Surveying, and for 17 years he ran it on Saturdays and Sundays while working full time for the city.

When he retired in 2017 after 30 years in public service, he took the company full-time that October with six employees. Today he oversees 19, and the firm gets steady work from builders like DR Horton and Alexander & Baldwin, along with new demand from rebuilding on Maui and Hawai‘i island.

But the line I couldn’t shake was the last one in Bobbie’s nomination:

“To showcase his great heart, Kenn’s sister-in-law passed away a few years ago and he took in her two sons, his nephews, into his home and employed them at his company. It is his hope that some day they will learn to love working the business and maybe someday take it over. That would be a great family legacy.”

Another honoree, John Leong, made a different kind of choice. After graduating from Wharton School of Business in 2000, he turned down banking and startup opportunities in New York and San Francisco and came home to Honolulu to work on protecting Hawai‘i’s environment.

Twenty-six years later, his company, Pono Pacific Land Management, is Hawai‘i’s largest private natural resource conservation firm, managing more than 4,500 acres across five islands. With the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, it built a 14,785-foot predator-exclusion fence at Kanahā Pond Wildlife Sanctuary, billed as the nation’s largest, to protect nesting habitat for endangered waterbirds. In 2025 alone, Pono Pacific completed more than 26,000 feet of fencing, protecting roughly 4,180 acres.

This year it also grew its conservation team by half and launched Pono Energy, which is running camelina crop trials with Par Hawai‘i and farmers on four islands. The crop could one day supply renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel grown in our own fields.

John also leads Kupu, another of this year’s honorees, which sends young people into loko i‘a and lo‘i kalo to restore the land while they earn career credentials. Restoring Hawai‘i and building its next generation of workers are, for him, the same job.

Leong is quick to credit the people around him. “I’ve been blessed by so many great people around me who have mentored me, my partners and people and youth I get to work with,” he says in a follow-up interview. “The success is me being a product of the people and growing up in the surroundings here.”

The rest of our honorees are featured starting on page 60. The business community is stepping up too. Our Most Charitable Companies list, with a cover story by Managing Editor Ken Wills, begins on page 17 and shows Hawai‘i’s corporate firms giving generously even as federal funding shrinks. First Hawaiian Bank, which sponsored this year’s Excellence in Business awards, tops the list, as it has for all but three of the last 14 years. In 2025 it gave $6.6 million in cash and in-kind donations, 16% more than the year before and ahead of The Nakupuna Companies, which edged out last year’s leader Matson.

First Hawaiian Bank’s employees gave as well. Its 1,961 employees contributed 7,362 hours of their own time and $886,450 of their own money through a giving program called Kōkua Mai, with participation above 99%.

Every time Kent and I host these events or Ken and I write and report out stories about these companies and their employees, I leave asking myself the same question: Am I doing enough in life and for our community? After Kenn’s and John’s stories, and the generosity of so many others, I’m asking it again.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful to you, our readers. You support local businesses, you show up for your neighbors and you give us a reason to keep telling these stories. Thank you for reading, and from all of us at Hawaii Business Magazine, mahalo and happy Thanksgiving.