Eighth Annual

Awards Dinner

February 24, 2011

Hawaii Institute for Public AffairsHo‘oulu Award Honorees

2011

BUSINESS

Mark DunkerleyPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Hawaiian Airlines

LABOR

J.N. Musto, Ph.D.Executive Director

University of Hawaii Professional Assembly

GOVERNMENT

Rose Tseng, Ph.D.Chancellor Emerita and Professor

University of Hawaii– Hilo

COMMUNITY

Keith Amemiya Former Executive Director

Hawaii High School Athletic Association

CULTURE & ARTS

MELEMusic & Entertainment Learning Experience

Co-founders: Gavan Daws, Jim Ed Norman, Ramsey Pedersen

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Governor George Ariyoshi

Insights in Leadership

Insights in Leadership are short vignettes on the views and opinions on public leadership summarized from the discussions of seven very special leaders of Hawaii: Mark Dunkerley, J.N. Musto, Rose Tseng, Keith Amemiya, Gavan Daws, Jim Ed Norman, Ramsey Pedersen and Governor George Ariyoshi. Insights in Leadership provides a snapshot into their personal lives as they share their views on leadership, mentoring, motivation, inspiration and success. These individuals were honored on February 24, 2011 by the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs for their contributions and achievements in the field of public policy and public affairs. Each received the prestigious “Ho‘oulu Award” which symbolizes their ability to inspire public leadership. Insights in Leadership seeks to provide a sincere and genuine discussion on the essence of leadership as seen through the eyes of Hawaii’s very own.

Ho‘oulu AwardThe Hawaiian word “Ho‘oulu” means to grow, stir up, inspire and excite. It is an appropriate name for HIPA’s leadership award—the Ho‘oulu Award—which seeks to celebrate the achievements of those men and women who have made a significant impact in the public affairs and public policy arena. Ho‘oulu honorees exhibit strong leadership, determination and devotion to excellence in their respective professions and occupations, and have made a positive and community-wide impact. Be it in business, government, labor, community, culture and the arts, or as a lifetime achievement award, Ho‘oulu awardees inspire in themselves and others excellence and commitment to make Hawaii a better place.

you from anywhere to Hawaii. “No other major airline has a mission tied to a destination,” he explained. “Ours is to continue to provide the inter-island service on which our State’s economy and way of life depends while we open up new markets to bring more visitors to the islands.”

Under his watch, the airline focuses tirelessly on continuous improvement – a discipline that has consistently earned Hawaiian top marks in its industry for on-time performance, service quality, and the gold stan-dard: profitability.

And while other airlines were drop-ping routes and cutting schedules, Hawaiian added new routes to the West Coast, the South Pacific and Asia – the most recent to Seoul, Korea. To accommodate this growth, the company has committed to the delivery of $7 billion in new state-of-the-art wide-body aircraft – thought to be the largest private sector invest-ment in Hawaii infrastructure in history and a calculated move that started several years earlier as part of the company’s plan to grow new markets for Hawaii.

“As routes opened up, we needed to be ready to bid for them,” he said.

It is the combination of long-term vision and day-to-day execution that has Hawaiian well positioned for a new era of growth into interna-tional markets.

Dunkerley is quick to emphasize that the company’s exceptional performance would not have been possible without its employees. The sentiment may sound predictable but is genuine. “I’m privileged to work alongside these terrific employees who, every day, deliver the best, most reliable and friendly service to the eight million customers who fly with us every year.”

One small way the company shows its appreciation is to take employees up for rides in its 81-year-old Bellanca Pacemaker, the original aircraft that started Hawaiian in 1929. He often pilots the plane. But perhaps more telling is the company’s support for the community. “The commu-nity is our raison d’etre,” Dunkerley said. “And our employees reflect the community, so we’re proud of the fact that we are a major corporate supporter of local charities.”

As for Mark Dunkerley, he’s still reaching for new heights at Hawaiian, enjoying the challenges and competi-tion of the industry he loves.

hen you watch the grace and breath-stopping maneuvers of aerobatics, you can’t help but marvel at the pilot’s skill and nerves of steel. It is a demonstration of controlled risk in the extreme. Small wonder that this is Mark Dunkerley’s favorite form of recreation. He is the man who brought Hawaiian Airlines out of bankruptcy six years ago, and has since built the business into one of the world’s most successful airlines almost tripling its size and main-taining its profitability — a feat few airlines have matched. And he did it in the midst of a deep recession.

While the risks were less visually exciting than aerial maneuvers, they were no less real on the ground.

“In aerobatics, you need a clear vision of what you want to achieve, and then you work hard and diligently to make the improvements to get there,” he said. “It’s the same with running the airline.”

His vision was crystal clear. Unlike other airlines, who promise to take you from anywhere to anywhere, Hawaiian’s sole mission is to take

Mark Dunkerley

W

Excellence in BUSINESS

Reaching New Heights

blind society, and were working to integrate public accommodations. But the riots polarized the community and the dream died.

Musto had his own personal dream of becoming a minister and had his sights set on Yale Divinity School. However, his pastor intervened. “We don’t need more ministers. We need parishioners like you who don’t just profess their faith but act on it,” he told the young Musto. So he changed course. He went on to get a multi-disciplinary Ph.D. in law, education and business at the University of Michigan, and wrote his thesis on “The impact of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on Public Employment.” He had not lost his dream. He simply shifted his focus to higher education, which he believes is the best way to achieve economic and social advancement for all people

– not just a select few. Enter UHPA with a job offer.

At first, he turned them down, but became intrigued with Hawaii’s unified educational system and loved the idea of Hawaii not being a race-based culture. The state’s lack of majority groups and its extreme isolation in the middle of the Pacific meant that people had to learn to make accommodations for the

society to work. He took the job with the intention of giving it five years. Thirty years later, Musto is still the chief negotiator for UHPA, whose membership includes the faculties of seven community colleges, UH-Hilo, UH-Manoa, and UH-West Oahu.

Musto sees UHPA’s role as saving higher education from becoming totally politicized, by itself becoming politically active and using collec-tive bargaining as a tool. He cites his favorite definition of higher education by former UH President Al Simone’s.

“Simone said higher education is ‘of the faculty, by the administration, for the students.’ Our job is to balance what this means for the faculty in the overall equation, and at the same time do everything we can to preserve the academic governance of the university.”

t was not just the talk on “Collective Bargaining in Higher Education” at the City University of New York that got the attention of University of Hawaii faculty members in attendance. It was the speaker J.N. Musto. He obvi-ously knew his subject, not just in theory, but also in practice. At the time, he was executive director and chief negotiator for the faculties of Central Michigan University and Ferris State University. The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly (UHPA) was sorely in need of a knowledgeable, seasoned negotiator. In 1971, Hawaii’s public employees had won the right to bargain, and by 1974, of the 13 collective bargaining units, UHPA was the only one without a negotiated contract. After unsuccessfully trying it on their own, they believed Musto was the man for the job.

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Musto learned first hand about the fight for economic and social parity. He lived through the race riots that wracked the city during the 1960s. Before that time, teenagers in his church and fellow teens at black churches had a dream of a color-

J.N. Musto, Ph.D. Excellence in LABOR

IThe Balancing Act

If she sounds like an idealist, she is. But she also is a realist.

“I want to make things better for our diverse community, better for people, that’s what drives me” she explained.

“The best way to do that is to build teams and motivate others to work on a common vision to improve life for everyone. That’s what I love doing.”

She comes by this ethos naturally. She was born in Northern China to parents who were trained doctors.

“We were poor, but my mom would see poor patients, often charging them nothing,” she said. “My parents worked hard, always treating people with kindness and compassion, and that made a big impression that stays with me today.”

With two years education in engineer- ing, degrees in chemistry and nutritional sciences, and minors in biochem-istry and physiology, Tseng had the academic credentials to guide UH Hilo to new levels of excellence. UH Hilo developed accredited programs in teacher education, nursing, business, and Hawaiian language; six master’s programs in fields that target the state’s social, economic and cultural issues; and doctorates in Hawaiian and indigenous language and culture, and in pharmacology.

Her sphere of influence extended to the community, where she worked with community partners to build or expand resources like UH Hilo’s University Park of Science and Technology. She founded the Office of Mauna Kea Management in large part to manage and protect the precious resources of the mountain as new astronomy facilities are built such as the Thirty Meter Telescope now in the design stage at $1.2 billion.

She also founded UH Hilo’s ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawai‘i to inspire young minds to explore science. She used her connections with NASA, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Agriculture to bring in faculty research grants. Under her leadership, UH Hilo became an economic engine, with direct and indi-rect impacts exceeding $240 million and 4,000 jobs.

So what’s ahead for Tseng? Post chan-cellorship, she’s incredibly passionate about leadership development, espe-cially for women and minorities, and she is involved in science, technology and energy initiatives.

We have not heard the last of Rose Tseng.

ou can never use too many superlatives to describe Rose Y. Tseng, Ph.D., who took a small, virtually unknown liberal arts college on the island of Hawai‘i and turned it into a compre-hensive, internationally-recognized university with nearly double the student body as when she started.

Tseng was chancellor at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo from 1998 to 2010, and was the first Asian American woman to lead a four-year university in the country.

Before that, her career spanned 23 years at San Jose State University in California, where she rose through the ranks as professor, founding chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science, and dean of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts. Just before coming to Hilo, she spent five years as chancellor of the 24,000-student West Valley-Mission Community College District in Silicon Valley.

So, why UH Hilo?

“I saw Hilo as the ideal place to develop a multi-cultural model for uniting the world through education, culture and technology,” she said in a recent interview.

Rose Tseng, Ph.D. Excellence in GOVERNMENT

YThe Tseng Legacy

myself, I love sports and know that it’s just as important for the non-superstar athletes,” said Amemiya, who ran cross country and track at Punahou School. “I also knew how important high school sports is to the entire state, and I felt it would be a great way to get involved and help our youth.”

He quickly discovered the extent of the challenge. “Working for the HHSAA really opened my eyes to how much our high school athletic programs needed in terms of upgraded facilities and team funding,” he said.

Amemiya wanted to expand athletic competition to include more than the perennial favorites, and to diversify opportunities for athletes of both genders across the state – meaning the neighbor islands. Today, there are 42 annual state championships that include such lower profile sports as air riflery, bowling, cheerleading, judo, wrestling, swimming and diving, golf, tennis, and water polo. There’s also a second classification (Division II) for smaller schools. Under Amemiya’s leadership, Hawaii holds the distinction of having the most high school championships of any state in the country.

Of course, the big kahuna of local sports – football – is where Amemiya stirred things up. He shelved the old practice of naming the winner of the Oahu Prep Bowl the state champion, and replaced it with a true Statewide Football Championship playoff involving football schools from across the state.

Perhaps Amemiya’s most high profile win was the very successful 2009

“Save Our Sports Fund” campaign, when a state budget crunch threat-ened to shut down public high school athletics. He issued a plea to the busi-ness and general community and in record time raised nearly $1.5 million to cover the expected shortfall. It was a truly amazing testament to the regard he enjoys in the state.

Amemiya has since hung up his sports cap, and moved on to the University of Hawaii Board of Regents as its new executive adminis-trator and secretary. Who could have predicted that? He explained,

“I was fortunate to have the opportu-nity to join UH’s leadership team to help them move our state’s higher education initiatives forward for the benefit of hopefully many generations to come.”

f his career path had followed its expected course, Keith Amemiya would still be practicing commer-cial litigation. Fresh out of the University of Hawaii law school, he launched his career in 1991, spending the next seven years building a successful practice and earning a nice income. So, what was he thinking by giving it all up to take over the leadership of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association (HHSAA), the state’s governing body for high school sports? It was a move that surprised his friends and colleagues, especially since he wasn’t a star athlete, nor did he know much about athletic adminis-tration. Even more puzzling, he would be taking a substantial pay cut.

To complicate matters, the HHSAA, which serves 95 public and private high schools and over 33,000 student-athletes statewide, had just become autonomous from the Department of Education, which meant that Amemiya would now be responsible for signifi-cant fundraising. Perhaps you could blame the move on youthful optimism

– he was just 32 years old at the time.

“The truth is, I was intrigued because, even though I’m not a star athlete

Keith Amemiya Excellence in COMMUNITY

ISaving Sports

They took the idea to Pedersen, who embraced it. This was the genesis of MELE, a music business program based at Honolulu Community College (HCC).

MELE – Music and Entertainment Learning Experience is modeled on a Nashville program at Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business, a nationally ranked industry school, with which Norman is connected.

“Nashville – ‘Music City’ – has been a magnet to countless thousands of creative people for decades,” said Norman, noting that music is worth more to Nashville than tourism is worth to Hawaii. “MELE can help to bring these two communities together and create new businesses in Hawaii for generations to come.”

Through Norman and Pedersen, MELE established a working relationship with Belmont, which provides curric-ulum to HCC via live interactive video, with instructors from both institutions team-teaching the courses.

MELE now has 81 students pursuing AA degrees in music business and audio engineering, with access to state-of-the-art recording technology at the new Mike Curb MELE Studios at HCC.

“There are some fifty career paths in music and entertainment, creatively, technologically, and on the busi-ness side,“ said Pedersen. “Through MELE, graduates will learn how to create exciting music that is globally marketable.”

MELE has received $1.2m in federal stimulus money, plus support from the Hawaii state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, and close to half a million dollars in private donations, local and national.

Already MELE has been actively working to shepherd music from Hawaii onto the global enter-tainment scene. It is helping to choose soundtrack music for “The Descendants,” the upcoming Hollywood feature film shot here, starring George Clooney, directed by Oscar winner Alexander Payne, and based on a novel by Hawaii’s Kaui Hart Hemmings.

“This is a natural for MELE,” said Daws. “Local base, global reach – it’s an example of how the program can help generate export-quality music that can have an impact in the world entertainment industry, to the benefit of Hawaii.”

ho could ever forget the simple ukelele chords accompanying the sweet sounds of Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo‘ole singing his version of “Over the Rainbow”? So global is its appeal that it has been featured worldwide in soundtracks for films, television shows and commercials. Seventeen years after its release, the recording still has appeal, climbing to number one for nine straight weeks on the German singles charts in 2010. It speaks to the universality of IZ’s music, which, while steeped in Hawaiian culture,

“has the power to cross boundaries of language, geography and musical genres.” (Mountain Apple Co.)

Enter three men — Jim Ed Norman, former president of Warner Bros Records Nashville; Ramsey Pedersen,

MELE Excellence in CULTURE & ARTS

W The business of music in Hawaii

Pictured above (l to r): Gavan Daws, Jim Ed Norman and Ramsey Pedersen

former chancellor of Honolulu Community College, and Hawaii author Gavan Daws.

Daws was writing a history of Elektra Records, a division of Warner Music Group, when he and Norman met. To them, the IZ phenomenon has broader implications for Hawaii.

Simply put: with the technology of the 21st-century music industry, music from anywhere can go anywhere–including music from Hawaii.

Norman and Daws knew that for the local industry to thrive globally, it must focus on the business of music. It must develop a more robust infra-structure and support enterprises to make music from Hawaii more successful and marketable worldwide – to Hawaii’s benefit.

who was also the first Asian American governor in the entire nation.

His governing style became known as “quiet but effective” – the emphasis on “effective.” For example, a fiscally conservative Ariyoshi successfully guided the state through its first economic recession and with prudent fiscal policies, avoided a budget deficit. The state never experienced a short-fall during his administration.

“In the good times, we should be looking ahead and change our spending patterns so that we can weather the down times,” he said.

Another pressing issue for the governor was Hawaii’s rapid popula-tion growth and what he saw as long-term impacts of uncontrolled growth on quality of life and the environment. This was the basis for Ariyoshi’s Hawaii State Plan – what he calls “the people’s plan,” because it enlisted ordinary citizens in developing 12 functional plans for managing growth, and for sustainable uses of our natural resources.

“It was important to get people involved in thinking about their preferred future. A plan is a guidepost and minor shifts may be necessary along the way, but we know where we want to end up. These efforts need

to be sustained with discussion in our schools, in government, in business and in our community.”

His latest book, “Hawaii: The Past Fifty Years • The Next Fifty Years” has resulted in many requests to speak to school students across the state. “The future is theirs. So I dialog with them and encourage them to participate in the process,” he said. “I’ve been impressed with their energy and the freshness of their ideas. They give me great hope for Hawaii’s future.”

He bemoans the low voter turnouts of recent years. A very small segment of the state’s population is making deci-sions for everyone – a strange reversal of the fairness he fought for. Now when all people have the right and the opportunity to have a say in their future, they have defaulted through apathy. His hope is that young people will change this.

“Our hope for the future is our young people, and HIPA can help to get them engaged in shaping their destiny.”

eorge R. Ariyoshi never dreamed of being a politi- cian, much less governor of the state of Hawaii. He just wanted to practice law. But in the early 1950s, a question from Governor John Burns would change that. What, he asked the young Ariyoshi, was the biggest issue facing Hawaii? Ariyoshi’s answer: Fairness.

Power was concentrated in the hands of the Big Five, which meant that opportunities were non-existent for those outside the power struc-ture. Burns, who knew that change would have to come through political action, encouraged him to run for office. So he did, and a long political career began in 1954 when he was elected to the territorial House of Representatives. We know the rest: Ariyoshi eventually became Governor Burns’ lieutenant governor in 1970, succeeded an ill Burns in 1973 as acting governor, was elected governor in his own right in 1974, and went on to serve three terms.

“It was Governor Burns’ hope to see the first Hawaii-born, non-white governor for the state,” said Ariyoshi,

Governor George Ariyoshi LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

GOur Young: His Hope for the Future

Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs Ho‘oulu Award Honorees 2004–2010

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye Senator Nadao Yoshinaga

BUSINESS

H. Mitchell D’OlierMichael J. FischAlan M. OshimaDonald G. Horner Dean J. Okimoto Dr. Virginia M. Pressler

GOVERNMENT

Randolph G. MooreJennifer Goto SabasHonorable Haunani ApolionaHonorable Micah A. Kane Maurice H. Kaya Mayor Harry Kim

LABOR

Ah Quon McElrathJoan Lee HustedRandolph P. PerreiraTed T. Tsukiyama Ronald I. Taketa Russell K. Okata

COMMUNITY

Kelvin H. TaketaDavid M. NakadaLynn C.Z. MaunakeaCarol H. McNamee Timothy E. Johns Henry B. Clark

CULTURE & ARTS

Chris LeeLee CatalunaSamuel and Mary CookeTom Coffman L. Candy Suiso Eric E. Chock Darrell H.Y. Lum

Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs

The Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs generates and communicates new knowledge and original research to improve the quality of life in our islands. By creating an informed atmosphere for policy-makers and community leaders, we provide tools and opportunities to strengthen Hawaii’s public decision-making process.

We are Hawaii’s first independent and nonpartisan public policy institute. We are founded on a philosophy of community collabo-ration, fact-based research and issues education. Our tools include convening small- and large-scale community conversations, surveying stakeholders and industry leaders, providing sound research and data, gathering public input, and communicating through the media, Internet and additional channels.

Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs 1003 Bishop Street, Suite 765 Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96813 Phone: 808-585-7931 Fax: 808-585-7932 www.hipaonline.com

William M. Kaneko President & CEO