Hawaii's Dreamers
Muscular and athletic, Shingai Masiya was certainly college football material. He hoped for that coming out of high school, but the dream died. While he had come into the U.S. legally at age 13 with his family from Zimbabwe, a…
Leadership
Talk Story: Amy Kunz, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Assistant Superintendent, State Department of Education
Kunz oversees a budget of $1.9 billion that pays for a staff of 25,000 and 289 public schools, including charter schools. Q: Energy costs for the schools are one of the largest parts of the annual budget. How are you tackling…
An Epic Match
Noel Nedli is the founder and CEO of Room Service in Paradise, which delivers 50,000 meals annually from 75 Oahu restaurants, employs 45 people and grosses more than $2 million a year. But, back in 1991, Nedli was studying at Windward…
Yes, Locally Owned Has a Future
It feels like offshore-owned companies are taking over Hawaii, but the reality is their number peaked in 2007. Meanwhile, the number of locally owned companies has grown seven times faster since 1995. The same forces that ate so many local…
Travelin’ Music
KELLI CRUZ IS a “doer.” She learned early on how to build things from her father, who was a carpenter, and create Hawaiian music from her mother, who was a hula dancer. “When I was 18, I picked up a guitar…
Talk Story: Randy Iwase, Public Utility Commission Chair
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,…
Did You Know: Size Matters
The Hawaii Community Development Authority, the agency that oversees development in Kakaako and a few other places on Oahu, runs its shop with a mountain of rules and regulations, as you might expect. Whether you agree with HCDA’s rules or…
Multimedia Innovator
Jay Fidell didn’t set out to be a journalist. The founder of the ThinkTech Hawaii arrived here from New York in 1965 as a Coast Guard lawyer and military judge. “It was the time of Vietnam, and war was in…
How Much Will it Cost Us in the End?
"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…
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