If you look at John Thielst today, sitting in an office in downtown Honolulu, you would never imagine his previous career. The managing principal of Coffman Engineers, a Honolulu-based engineering consulting firm, once worked almost entirely underwater. For about three…
Faced with a problem that’s literally out of this world, scientists went looking for a solution on an isolated part of Mauna Loa. Astronauts who eat the same freeze-dried and dehydrated options day after day tend to suffer from “menu…
Imagine a retail business in which one key measure of sales growth was up 42.2 percent last year, with similar growth this year. You’d be on Easy Street, right? Except this same business is plagued by a perennial problem: Customers…
Geckos are iconic in Hawaiʻi, as much as pineapples or ukuleles, and, like them, are not native to the Islands. The Polynesians brought them here about 1,500 years ago along with other plants and animals.
Kimberly Hahn says no escape waspossible. Growingupwithonly brothers near the red-dirt cane fields around Mililani meant growing up riding dirt bikes and loving it. “The boys weren’t going to play Barbies,” she says with a laugh. “So you either play…
If you have lived in Hawaii for a while, the ranking of the richest and poorest ethnic groups shouldn’t surprise you. The hierarchy has remained the same for the past four decades, says UH ethnic studies professor Jonathan Okamura, who…
Payday is always a great day. It means more money in your wallet or bank account. But imagine if your pay stub had an asterisk and tiny print that was hardly readable: *Each dollar worth only 82 cents. That’s what…
PHOTOS BY MARK ABEIT When people think about the fashion business, they tend to focus on the designer’s creative ideas and the finished products they buy. The beginning and the end. But it takes a great deal of work…
Nandini Bhattacharjee is not your typical retailer. Her Kailua shop, Nomads Hawaii, abbreviated as Nohi, is based on her personal philosophy and approach to life. “I would not have done this if it did not allow me a way to help people,” Bhattacharjee says. “At…
Henry Kapono Kaaihue was already a well-known performer, with decades on stage and dozens of best selling CDs, when he met his wife-to-be, Lezlee. She was a successful, trained-on-the-job stockbroker and he was playing at the Pier Bar at Aloha Tower…
Problem: Search online for, say, a traditional hula kahiko dancer, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a high-quality image you can easily download and use for your business. Daniel Leuck, CEO of the Honolulu-based creative agency Ikayzo, saw that need for good…
A $1.4 billion construction project would be a big deal anywhere in the world, but for struggling Hilo and Hawaii Island’s moribund construction industry, it’s a gift from above – figuratively and literally. “It’s a huge project for us,” says…
Source: Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations One way to follow a changing economy is to track the fastest-declining and fastest-growing jobs. The following infographic report outlines the state’s forecast for the biggest changes in Hawaii’s labor market, both in…
The most heated argument about modern offices pits the relative privacy of cubicles and offices versus collaborative nature of open workspaces When the cubicle hit the furnishings market in 1967, it forever changed the landscape of office culture and the…
Kevin Lefforge says there’s nothing like the aroma of a garage housing a classic car. The lifelong “gearhead” and Steeltech project manager was on a quest for a hobby car while living in California in 2005. He ended his search when VW restoration specialist Lenny Copp showed…
Once a month on a Saturday morning, Francis Imada flips on radio station 105.1, and heads to his backyard, where 20 miniature trees await his gentle care. Then, with Hawaiian music playing in the background, the CFO of Clinical Laboratories of Hawaii spends two hours snipping, pruning…
Are they worth it? That’s the question asked each year by shareholders, regulators, politicians and the public when publicly traded companies reveal how much they pay their CEOs. Different methods have emerged to try to answer the question of “Are…
The hard reality of a slow-growing national economy and persistently high unemployment rates has helped spawn a mythical creature, the purple squirrel. Even though no one has ever seen a purple squirrel, some employers keep looking for one. And, for…
Phillip Ana, an employee at Hawaii’s Executive Office on Aging, leads workshops on state-run disability services, manages an online database of resources and consults with clients by phone about services for Hawaii’s disability community. Andrew Sensano is in charge of…
Wednesday, 2:34 PM Love’s Bakery, Kalihi Photographer David Croxford >> Nenita Ramos, oven infeed operator, checks the quality of the loaves heading into the 400-degree oven. This batch of Hawaii’s Hearth 100 percent Whole Wheat bread is one of 276…
In our lives, we’re probably given more than a million words of advice. Almost everyone feels free to dispense it, even if we don’t ask for it, but much of it is trivial and soon forgotten. The advice that resonates…
These bacteria are a key part of UH’s plan to double the money it collects from federal grants over the coming decade “Micro-organisms dominate this planet,” says David Karl, director of C-MORE, the UH-based Center for Microbial Oceanography, Research and…
www.honhl.com 808.681.7500 loansonline@honhl.com Question: I’m a small business owner. What should I do to ensure I’m in the best position to finance a new home? Answer: When someone wants to buy a home or refinance one, a mortgage company looks…
It’s impossible to really say what a human life is really worth, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. It happens all the time in wrongful-death suits, which are designed to compensate family members and dependents for their economic loss.…