WASHINGTON - ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. As a candidate, that's how much Donald Trump said he planned to spend, if elected, to fix the country's crumbling infrastructure. This proposal was one of the key policies Trump used to distinguish himself from…
It makes sense for the leaders of local small businesses and county governments to fly 4,800 miles every year to visit a hill. That's because when you are on Capitol Hill, there are opportunities all around you. "As of today,"…
Interviewed for this story are the four members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, all Democrats: Sen. Mazie Hirono Sen. Brian Schatz Rep. Colleen Hanabusa Rep. Tulsi Gabbard FIVE RISKS 1. OBAMACARE (The repeal of Obamacare would) have…
With his recent promotion to president of one of Hawaii’s biggest locally owned businesses (No. 8 on the 2016 Hawaii Business Top 250), Ching is helping oversee Servco’s dramatic overseas expansion. We ask him about the challenges of operating in…
When you look at Hawaii’s biggest problems, it’s astounding how many are tied to our housing shortage. Nationally, we’re near the top in cost of living, price of housing, homelessness and time spent in traffic. And we’re near the bottom…
Developer Peter Savio says everyone in Hawaii pays more for common items like food because of an unfair system of leasehold land rents. He says the current system does not account for decades of up-and-down land prices and economic conditions,…
With the collapse of the NextEra merger, HEI’s Lau remains Hawaii’s most powerful and highest-paid woman executive. We talk about the status of women in the C-Suite, and what it takes for them to get there. Q: With the retirement…
Three award-winning local architects talk about their roles in society, preserving historical buildings, and the ugliest and best-looking buildings in town. Glenn Mason and Bettina Mehnert were selected in April as fellows in the American Institute of Architecture, one of…
Photo by David Croxford Before being hired by Damien this year, Porter was a law professor and ran the highly regarded Litigation Center at Golden Gate University School of Law. Prior to that, he spent a decade as a…
Even after six years at the helm of the state’s second largest bank, Ho is still a relatively young CEO, at age 50. However, he points out: “There are a lot of miles on the odometer.” We talk to him…
For the past four years, Gold has led HMSA through a dramatic transformation in the healthcare industry. We ask him about the insurance company’s plans to fundamentally change how it pays physicians. Q: HMSA is about to embark on a…
After nearly three decades as a lawyer and law professor on the Mainland, the former dean of the Villanova University law school comes home to lead HPU. We talk to John Gotanda about what it takes to be a university president,…
Since taking the helm in 2005, just as Hawaiian Airlines was coming out of bankruptcy, Dunkerley has presided over a period of unprecedented growth. With new routes to Japan, Korea, China, Australia and New Zealand, the airline has spent billions…
Two years ago, 27,000 gallons of jet fuel leaked from the military’s giant Red Hill underground storage tanks. The Navy more fully explains what went wrong then and answers the question: Will further or bigger leaks happen and contaminate a…
To solve homelessness, we need to build lots more affordable housing, but Hawaii has failed to do that for decades. Three men with very different visions are trying to fix that. It’s an improbable place to build affordable housing:…
Eric Gleason President, NextEra Energy Hawaii President, NextEra Energy Transmission After a career in investment banking – interrupted by a couple of years backpacking around the world with his wife – Gleason has spent the last six years in the…
Batteries are old. In a sense, the last major development in battery technology was the invention of the lead-acid battery in 1859 by the French physicist Gaston Plante. Earlier batteries had short lives, quickly losing their charge as their electrodes…
Henk Rogers, Hawaii Business' CEO of the year, does not follow conventions - he ignores or breaks them. Henk Rogers is an unusual choice for Hawaii Business magazine’s CEO of the Year. Past CEOs of the Year have led some…
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,…
Dozens of local charities work with homeless people. All have boards of directors and staff. Most have an office and equipment, like a bus or kitchen, to maintain. And almost all face the same need to raise funds and provide…
There must be blood in the water. Until last year, when Hawaiian Electric Industries announced its intent to merge with Florida energy giant NextEra, the company seemed like a permanent fixture of the local economy. Only a few zealous renewable-energy…
George Atta, director of the Department of Planning and Permitting and a former principal at the architectural firm Group 70 international, knows just how swamped Honolulu's permitting system is. Hideo Simon can barely contain his frustration. “It took me six…
The $572 million Ewa extension of Ala Moana Shopping Center, which is scheduled to open on November 12, has been an enormous undertaking. As Francisco Gutierrez, director of development at General Growth Properties, explains, the project will add 330,000 square…
G ov. David Ige surprised many when he appointed Iwase to replace Hermina Morita at the PUC. Clearly, the former city councilman, state senator, deputy attorney general and chair of the state Tax Revenue Commission has administrative and political chops,…
"For one thing,” he says, “we’re not over budget at all, at this point. We’re estimating that, because construction costs are escalating so quickly in the current year, that next year, when we’re signing the remaining construction contracts, we’re going…
“ABOUT $1.1 BILLION A YEAR IS PAID OUT IN PENSION BENEFITS NOW (TO STATE AND COUNTY WORKERS). IN THE NEXT 10 TO 20 YEARS, THAT’S PROJECTED TO GROW TO ABOUT $2 BILLION A YEAR.” –WESLEY MACHIDA Director, State Department of…
David Ige surprised political observers last year by upsetting incumbent Neil Abercrombie in the Democratic primary, then beating Duke Aiona and Mufi Hannemann in the general election to become governor. Senior writer Dennis Hollier asked Ige about successes and controversies…
How do Hawaii’s emerging leaders develop the skills they need to run the state’s top companies, nonprofits and government agencies? They have a lot of options. Here are six of the most important leadership-training programs in Hawaii and a quick…
Soon – maybe even by the time you read this article – the state’s largest company, Hawaiian Electric Industries, will begin a radical transformation from the stodgy monopoly we’ve known for 124 years, into a much more nimble and competitive…
Richard Wacker didn’t start as a banker. An engineer by training, he spent 20 years in executive positions at General Electric. His first banking job came in 2004, when he left GE to run the troubled Korea Exchange Bank for…
Soon after NextEra Energy stirred up debate in the local energy community by announcing plans for a $4.3 billion takeover of Hawaiian Electric Industries, Ted Peck called us to put in his two bits. Like other media outlets in town,…
Chief of Staff to Gov. David Ige The former CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority has also been a state senator, executive director of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, director of the state Department of Human Resource Development, CEO of…
The coral reefs of the main Hawaiian Islands are worth $9.7 billion. That’s the finding of a well-known 2002 study by Dutch economists Herman Cesar and Pieter van Beukering. They created an elaborate equation that summed up the various types…
Even more than most scientists studying climate change, Camilo Mora has an apocalyptic vision of the future. In a controversial paper published this year in the journal Nature, Mora, a biogeography researcher at UH, tries to calculate the date of…
A lot of elements are needed to make Hawaiʻi self-sufficient in food. Here are a few examples of struggles and resiliency that enable more productive local farming and food production.
Executive Director, Pacific Resource Partnership PRP, a unique partnership between Hawaii’s top contractors and the Hawaii Carpenters Union, is a powerful supporter of rail. White talks about integrated communities and how they will help guide Oahu’s development. What are…
For a couple of years in the late 1990s, Robert Iopa worked in Kuala Lumpur for WATG, the Honolulu-based, international architecture firm specializing in resort development. For the young architect from Hawaii, it was an exciting time, but doing this…
A 40-year veteran at HMSA, Gold has led the local insurance giant since December 2012 as the healthcare industry undergoes a sea change. In a recent op-ed, you wrote that the state should try to close part of the Hawaii…
Since she helped found the VC firm Kolohala Ventures in 2006, Farnsworth has been a linchpin in the startup community in Hawaii. Now wearing multiple hats, she talks about the institutions and personal sacrifices it takes to build an ecosystem…
In last month’s edition, Hawaii Business published a conversation with seven of Hawaii’s best-known leaders: George Ariyoshi, John Dean, Walter Dods, Mark Dunkerley, Constance Lau, Kathryn Matayoshi and Colbert Matsumoto. They discussed the qualities of great leaders, the role of…
Thirteen years after he and his partner, Kaleo Taft, founded their fuel cell startup in a Waikiki apartment. Nine years after he put the company on NASDAQ in a $21 million IPO. Seven years after he and his colleagues gave…
Four decades after its creation, a University of Hawaii innovation remains the basis for Wi-Fi and mobile-phone transmissions Every time you use Wi-Fi, or send a text message, or share data over an Ethernet network, you can thank scientists at…
Coralie Chun Matayoshi, CEO, American Red Cross, Hawaii Chapter & Pacific Islands Region The Eastern Pacific hurricane season begins May 15 and runs through Nov. 30. In this interview, Matayoshi talks about disaster preparedness and the role the Red Cross plays…
Sometimes, we’re so used to thinking of Hawaii as an economic and political backwater that we forget the Islands have a key role to play in the Pacific Basin. For example, the Northeast Asia Economic Forum is an international organization…
For centuries, people around the world knew that chewing on the bark of certain willow trees could ease the pain of a toothache or a migraine. By the mid-19th century, scientists in France and Germany had isolated the chemical, salicylic…
Some afternoons, after lunching on a mess of ahi furikake or fried ahi belly at Nico’s, the big fish restaurant down on Pier 38, I like to walk across the street and amble down the docks and survey the ragtag fleet…
A lot of changes are happening at the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, but the most important is probably the chamber’s proactive approach to its legislative agenda. This year, for the first time, the Chamber is drafting its own package of…
PHOTOS BY RAE HUO It's hard to avoid baseball metaphors when talking about Hawaiian Telcom. Five years ago, faced with three straight quarters of losses, crippling debt and imminent bankruptcy, the century-old local telephone monopoly appeared to be down…
Sometimes, economists see the world more clearly than you and I. For example, the best explanation I’ve read for Hawaii’s chronic shortage of affordable housing is a recent blog entry on the website of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.…
The president of one of the largest charitable foundations in the state talks about how and why corporations give the way they do. Why would a company like Island Insurance create a foundation rather than just give directly to charity? Before, a…
Globally, many popular destinations are experiencing a backlash against tourism. Here are multiple perspectives on the message that Hawai‘i should send to potential visitors.
2025 SmallBiz Editor’s Choice Award winner: President Al Kakazu says his main job is to make the customers’ job easier.
