Reflections on My First Year at Hawaii Business Magazine
Over the past 12 months, we have been strategic about how we evolve our storytelling and expand our reach, and the results have been incredibly rewarding.
This month marks my one-year anniversary at Hawaii Business Magazine, and I’m loving it.
Over the past 12 months, we have been strategic about how we evolve our storytelling and expand our reach, and the results have been incredibly rewarding. My mission has been for our audience to experience storytelling in different ways — through print, online, audio with our read-alouds, radio and reels, on TV and through our live events.
One of our main priorities has been digitizing and expanding the multimedia dimension of our journalism. We have partnered with Hawaii News Now’s Annalisa Burgos and Hawaiʻi Public Radio’s Catherine Cruz to bring our business reporting to broader audiences in more dynamic and accessible ways.
We also launched our viral ICE Map, which quickly became one of our most impactful digital projects. At the same time, we have gone deeper in our coverage of Hawaiʻi’s financial and banking sectors, featuring conversations with leaders like Ann Teranishi, Bob Harrison and Peter Ho, who recently retired as CEO of Bank of Hawaiʻi, as well as University of Hawaiʻi’s President Wendy Hensel.
We introduced Trial and Error, a rotating column highlighting people in their 20s and 30s who share honest stories about wins, losses, failures and growth. It has been especially meaningful to create space for emerging voices and unfiltered experiences, including Marianne Leano’s story about two women who found themselves launching a business almost by accident.
Beyond editorial, we have built a robust events platform by hosting programming every single month of the year. Highlights include our sold-out Wahine Forum last October, which brought together roughly 1,000 attendees and featured Nicole Lapin, our CEO Healthcare Summit in February, and our Money Matters conference with Jean Chatzky and Nash Subotic in November. We also hosted our HB20 “20 for the Next 20” event at the YWCA, an Oscar-inspired evening that celebrated an incredible group of honorees.
As we continue to grow, we are also expanding how we collaborate. Hawaii Business Magazine is pleased to partner with Hawaiʻi Community Journal, formerly known as Overstory, a solutions-focused newsroom serving Hawaiʻi. Their community-centered reporting complements our coverage by offering deeper insight into how major issues impact people and places across the Islands.
Together, we aim to help readers better understand how Hawaiʻi’s biggest challenges across business, the environment and community life are interconnected. By sharing select stories and perspectives across both platforms, we are excited to provide a broader and more complete view of the forces shaping Hawaiʻi and the solutions emerging across sectors.
This year, we also launched our first-ever Asian American Pacific Islander Month editorial package, highlighting the people, places and cultural forces influencing Hawaiʻi today. It was an opportunity to celebrate identity, community and leadership in a way that felt both timely and rooted in the Islands. That coverage ranged from Kerri Meade’s feature on the resurgence of mahjong, a tile-based game that originated in China, which has taken on new life across generations and communities, to our profile of Tradewind Group Chairman Colbert Matsumoto, whose leadership reflects both legacy and forward-thinking vision.
On a personal level, this year has also been about learning Hawaiʻi by living it. In New York City, I was used to walking everywhere and relying on public transit, and I have brought that same mindset with me here. I take TheBus using my HOLO card, walk from the Skyline rail, use Uber when needed and often catch rides with friends and family.
The experience has been humbling. TheBus is reliable, but it is not as frequent as I would like, and it still does not accept digital payment. Riders need a HOLO card or exact cash with three one-dollar bills, which feels like a clear area for modernization. Still, there is something honest about moving through Hawaiʻi this way. You see more, you listen more and you better understand the communities we cover as many of our service workers take TheBus daily.
My one year back home has been nothing short of a lesson in paying attention — to the people on the bus, the conversations at the stops and the quiet resilience that moves through these islands every single day.
Please follow us on LinkedIn at Hawaii Business Magazine and on Instagram @hawaiibusinessmagazine to stay connected with our latest stories, events and initiatives.
Jennifer Ablan Editor-in-Chief
