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Ever wonder who creates the artwork displayed inside the Hub? You know, the dinosaurs, the comics, those abstract paintings?

Each month the Hub chooses a different local artist and exhibits their work, to showcase our community’s incredible talent. We love this because it creates the opportunity to support our local artists, foster new connections, spark conversations, and drive creativity through our ever evolving workspace decor. 

The Impact Art Gallery is our version of an art residency program. This space gives local artists an opportunity to share and sell their work. This month, we will share the art virtually as well.   Past artists have included: Lauren Hana Chai, Boz Schurr, Sheanae Tam, Bai Xin Chen, Ryan Higa, Aria Villafranca and Lauren Trangmar.

Sarah Kawaonahele Opaieie Mapuana Farris is our resident local artist for August.  Farris is a Native Hawaiian artist who is currently finishing her last semester at the University of Hawaii with a degree in marketing. You may have seen her working at Deck Waikiki and Arvo Cafe, and if not, you have definitely seen her artwork in various local businesses around O’ahu, such as Morning Brew Cafe and Beyond Fitness Hawai’i in Kakaako, Sunrise Shack in Waikiki, and on MoistHawaii merchandise –– an environmental awareness clothing brand.

This summer, she volunteered for Mele Murals, an organization that focuses on bringing local artists, musicians, and cultural advisors together to preserve Hawaiian culture.

We had the chance to speak with Farris about her experience with the Hub recently. This is what she had to say: 

Q: What inspires your art? 

A: Before moving to Hawaii, finding inspiration for my artwork was very difficult. When I started focusing on my art career in 2017, I noticed that my artwork was heavily influenced by the Hawaiian environment and culture. In my art classes at the University of Hawaii, my fellow students call me a passion painter. This is a person that relies on their emotions and can portray that through a piece. Upon moving here, I have felt more connected to my surroundings, using what I see and what I feel from the island and people to showcase in my art. 

Q: How did you get in touch with the Hub? 

A: I got in touch with the Hub through Josh, who used to be one of my coworkers at Morning Brew Kakaako. A year or two ago Josh started at the Hub and discussed that they usually look for artists to showcase their art, which led me to send in an application to be featured. 

Q: How do you benefit from this partnership? 

A: To me, The Hub is more than a coworking space for individuals. It is an organization that focuses on bringing different parts of the community together to make one ‘ohana. This concept aligns with what I would like to do with my artwork, bringing different people with different passions together to make a community that helps each other. What I think I can gain from this partnership is a community of people that help others in their creativity. I am hoping that this partnership will lead to many opportunities that will help me give back to my community. I am planning to take some of the profits of the exhibit and donate it to Mele Murals, in which it can help younger generations to be able to connect with their culture and to nurture their creativity. 

For more information about the Impact Art Gallery and to submit your artwork, please fill out this form or contact the Hub team.

Meet Alexander!

He has been a member of the hub for about 2 years, and found his way here so that he could be around other working people, network, and have a place where I could go and focus on his work. He likes that at the Hub, he is able to be around other people who want to be, “productive and smart and who are developing their own companies or working in their own areas in Hawai’i.”

To him working at the Hub gives him a place to go to work and be productive, but also be social and interact with and learn from other people. 

“Everybody who I have met here has been awesome. I really like the other people that work at the Hub and I really like the environment that the Hub team has cultivated.” 

He has worked on a lot of interesting projects, and loves to tell people’s stories. To get to know more about Alexander and to connect with him, visit his website: AlexanderDeedy.com. 

Name: Alexander Deedy

Work: Freelance Journalism

3 Questions: 

1. What work do you do?

I am a Freelance journalist. I work for Alaska magazine as their assistant editor, and also as the digital content manager for Alaska Magazine and a sister publication, The MilePost’s website. The digital content work I just took over fairly recently, within the last month actually, and we’ve been building websites for both publications and we try to update and upgrade our digital presence. Then, I write pieces on all sorts of other topics for other publications. I write regularly for Hawaii Farm and Food Magazine, I have done some environmental writing in the past on various topics. 

1(a) What are your favorite pieces to write?

I really like the long form pieces, so feature stories. Profiles are super fun- I got to write a piece recently about an endurance cyclist who is one of the top endurance cyclists in the world from Alaska. She spent a summer riding around all of the roads in the state. She was just such a super inspirational and driven lady who was really fun to talk to and so I love being able to get to know people and tell their stories.

1(b) How did you get started in writing?

I went to school for journalism. I started off by studying wildlife biology and realized that I wanted to get more into the storytelling kind of thing and be like a science writer, so I added journalism as a major.

       2. Do you have a Passion Project? 

I do have a passion project. I am a filmmaker on the side, and I started really pursuing that when I first moved to Hawai’i. I started with just creative writing at home and came into it as a screenwriter wanting to write screenplays. Luckily I was able to really connect with the film community here both through the Hawai’i Filmmakers’ Collective which is a nonprofit and Creative Lab Hawai’i which is a state sponsored program to teach developing creative entrepreneurs. That was just kind of my cool intro to filmmaking and I just fell in love with the craft, and I fell in love with the people who do it, you know? There’s just so many passionate, fun people who are independent filmmakers. 

I wrote some short screenplays, I started jumping on sets and helping to make short films. In 2018 I wrote, directed and produced a short film, and now I am currently working on a feature screenplay just as a side passion project. I also volunteer at the Hawai’i Filmmakers’ Collective as well, and I am on the board. I am one of the executive team members who helps build up programs to teach various filmmaking skills to various independent filmmakers.

        3. What do people not know about you?

When I was in college I got to go on an environmental reporting trip to India and spent almost a month in Maharashtra outside of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve. We put together a big multi media project as a team telling the story of the success of tiger conservation in India and how, because of their success, the population of the tigers was starting to grow out of the reserve and come in contact with the nearby communities. We had so much fun. We partnered with local university students who acted as our guides and translators and helped us put together the project. Ultimately it was a cool experience to see a different culture and travel to a different continent and also to practice environmental journalism. 

Meet your host Randi Lee 

She is a spiritual business coach that has been a member and host at the Hub for a little over a year! She joined the Hub after going to several other coworking spaces and even renting a space somewhere else to record a podcast! She says, “there just wasn’t the same community aspect as at the Hub”. She later joined some friends who were already members at the Hub, and admits, “I experienced the difference in community and was like, oh I want to be a part of this”. After a friend’s recommendation, she applied to be a host and has been a part of the team ever since. “I am really glad I [joined] because I just love the community and that’s what drew me in and why I stick around”. 

She enjoys working at the Hub because of its values, “like how the Hub really strives to be a beneficial presence here on the island and to give back. I just think we need more businesses that are really rooted in that”. To Randi, “It’s clear that George and Nam really care about their members, they care about their staff, you know they care about their community and it’s always like their decisions come from that deep place of wanting what’s best for everybody. Again I just think that we need to have more businesses that are built like that. I just love being part of that sort of organization and that sort of community.” 

She has created a career out of spiritual business coaching that incredibly thrived during COVID-19. She believes that inner reflection and asking yourself who you are and what you want to be are part of the process that leads you to your authentic self, and ultimately your own kind of success. 

“I think people need to learn how to be themselves- which sounds weird that we have to learn how to be ourselves- but in reality, we are so conditioned growing up to fit in and to try to be like everybody else, that I believe we lose that connection to our true and authentic self. I think the work that I am here to do is really to help, especially women (I do work with some men but I primarily work with women) reconnect with that truth of who they really are and then get to make money by being their true self.” 

Get to know Randi and how she works to help people turn their dreams into a reality!

You can find Randi at the Hub, but also:

-on Instagram @IAmRandiLee

-Voicing her power on the Uplifting Podcast 

Name: Randi Lee 

Work: Spiritual Business Coach/Hub Host 

3 Questions: 

1. What work do you do?

I am a Spiritual Business Coach and I help women create a business that comes from their soul as well as in an alignment with their values and with their unique gifts. I help them to create a business in alignment with that by using different strategies that combine mind, body and soul. 

                 1 (a) How did you get started?

I have a masters degree in special education and was formally working as a behavior analyst up until 2018. I found life coaching because I was just feeling really unfulfilled at the work that I was doing. It became less about the kids that I was serving and more about just getting the kids funding through the insurance companies. 

When I found life coaching, I discovered that there was a way for me to make an impact in other people’s lives in such a way that was actually in alignment with my own values. I started off as a life coach, coaching women to heal their relationships with their bodies and become more confident in their own skin. 

As I started doing that, the women that I worked with wanted to start building their own businesses; because once they were able to let go of the shame around their body and the limiting beliefs and all of the old stories that were holding them back, they realized that they really wanted to make an impact as well. 

So, then I just kind of fell into business coaching and I realized that’s actually what I loved to do more than just helping women with their body image issues. I really loved helping women discover how they want to make an impact and to really find their voice and their power. In the process of doing that I found that there were so many women-and this is my story as well- that got started in the online coaching space, and feel like we have to be like everybody else.  People were just looking for the next 5 step system, looking for the next strategy and trying to be like everybody else instead of really first connecting with the questions of ‘who am I, who do I want to be, how do I want to show up, what are my superpowers, what are my gifts’ and how to really be their authentic self. 

It was all of those really limiting beliefs and blocks that were holding people back from creating the business of their dreams. That’s how I got to find my gifts of helping people to connect with all of that using human design. I then transitioned to becoming a spiritual business coach because I don’t just coach women on the strategies and ‘the how to’, but I really help get to their deeper why helping them connect with their life’s purpose and how they want to bring that out into the world. 

1 (b) Has your work changed from COVID/how did you cope?

My work’s actually skyrocketed since the whole pandemic started. April was my highest month of 2020, but then May broke that and became my highest revenue month ever in the two years that I have been in business. I have grown and scaled my business tremendously over the past two months and it’s because I think people prior to this were looking for the right time to start their business and this was like ‘okay! If now is not the right time, when is it going to be’? 

This is especially for people who might have been laid off but were still getting unemployment or working from home for their jobs because they had more space where they could start working on this side hustle, this passion of theirs or their passion project and start to create that into a business where they can hopefully eventually leave their full time job and make it into their new full time job. 

Basically, i’ve seen a lot of people reach out over the last few months because it seems to be a time where they are also realizing that the jobs that they had before maybe weren’t really in alignment or didn’t really give them fulfillment and so now they are asking, ‘okay so what else is out there for me?’

I think that what we focus on expands, and so my focus has been ‘how can this be happening for me, how can i look at this to see the meaning behind this whole crazy quarantine’ and l was then able to see so many examples of how this was working for me and for other people who were having the same sort of success that I was. I know there’s a lot of negative stories, but I think that there are a lot of positive ones as well, of people who have discovered their passion during this time or even rediscovered it. 

          2. What’s your WHY?

My why is really just envisioning a world where everyone is connected with their own truth and really living in their power and their life’s purpose. I believe that a lot of the pain that’s going on in the world is that we believe from a young age that there is something wrong with us, that there’s something that we need to fix that we need to change, whether that be the color of your skin, or the size of your body or anything about you that you feel like is wrong. We’re taught throughout our lives that there’s something about us that needs to change or that needs to be fixed. And then, we spend our lives trying to chase after that only to realize that doing that  actually doesn’t bring us the happiness, love or fulfillment that we deserve or even that we desire. So, my whole mission is the vision of a world where everyone is connected with their life’s purpose, and really showing up as their true self. I just believe that the world would be such a better place if we all just started to love ourselves a little more, and started to connect to our power without feeling like there’s anything wrong with us.

         3. What do people not know about you?

People at the hub may not know that I am a competitive powerlifter. I am the first, and I believe still the only, woman from Hawai’i to squat over 600 pounds, so people probably don’t know that I did that before-and I can also bench close to 350 pounds! 

What is the Superpower Academy at the Hub?

Superpower Academy at the Hub is a collaboration between the Hub, a coworking space and Superpower Academy. The purpose of this program is to have an educational and fun summer camp for children while their parents take advantage of the professional work space at the Hub. The camp will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is a flexible hands-on summer program for children and parents can take advantage of a professional work space to focus on their work. The camp curriculum is used by elementary teachers and combines STEM with social and emotional learning. Again, this camp is to help working parents with a flexible, educational and fun child care solution for their keiki now. All superpowers will be taught by Alicia Donnelly, a current Kindergarten teacher at Kamiol’iki Elementary. This program is compliant with Hawaii Department of Human Services Guidelines.  Learn more about Superpower Academy at www.superpoweracademy.org.

How does it work?

The purpose of this program is to have an educational and fun summer camp for children while their parents take advantage of the professional work space at the Hub.  Drop off and pick up anytime Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9am – 2 pm.  The program is first come first serve with a limit of 10 keiki per day. Parents can purchase day passes for flexibility around their schedule. Parents can also purchase a package of 5 days for a discount and select what days they want to have their keiki attend. Flexibility is offered based on your working schedule.  While you get your working hours in at the Hub, your keiki are engaged in friendly activities.

Upon registration or drop-off parents will have to sign a waiver & image release form.

Can you tell me more about the curriculum? 

• Fun STEM projects help kids build proven skills for lifelong success
• Comics and stories of real heroes gets kids READING!
• Hidden messages and other surprises make learning fun
• Kinds learn lessons about emotions, empathy and making good choices
• Kids earn Superpowers as they learn real powers

How do I reserve a spot for my keiki? 

Purchase a spot through this link here: Eventbrite Link

If you want to buy a 5 day-pack for your keiki please contact the Hub team for the discount code!

When does it start and how long does it go for? 

The camp is now starting on July 1 , 2020 and runs until July 31, 2020. Drop off and pick up anytime Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9am – 2 pm.  Parents can choose day passes for added flexibility or multi day packs. Each week will have a theme and the Superpower Academy lessons will happen from 9:30am-11am.  If it is a success we may keep it going beyond July 31!

Who is this for? 

Keiki from Kindergarten through Fifth grade. Parents need to be working at the Hub while their children are at the camp. Parents can be members or purchase a day pass at the Hub.

How much is it and how do I pay? 

Flexible day passes are $50 per day. A five day package is discounted at $225. At this moment we are taking credit card and debit card purchases on site at the Host desk. We will be working on a way shortly to purchase online. Check back at this site for updates!

What about snacks and meals? 

The program will provide small snacks however parents are responsible for bringing lunch for their keiki.

Please check back on this page because there will be updates!

Name: Diana Gremillion

Company: Successful Life Strategies 

3 Questions: 

1. What work do you do?

I work as a life coach to help people in times of crisis and stress, in order to turn that situation into one of the best things that has ever happened to them. I am licensed by Mary Morrissey and Bob Proctor to teach courses that they have created. But I have also founded my own company called Successful Life Strategies, and the intent behind that is to really help professionals achieve next level success with less stress as they work smarter instead of harder.

 What’s your WHY?

I would say that my why is  that I have been through a lot of painful and difficult, traumatic things in my life. And one of the things that I always promised to myself and has helped me to keep going, has been the decision and the commitment that the pain/difficulty was not going to be bigger than me. I was going to turn it into something good. I have a very strong conviction in that as well and for my clients and people in general that whatever pain we go through is here to help us create greater good for ourselves, not to take us down. 

Though this is not my passion project, this is what I do full time and I love what I get to do, and I am fully passionate about it. I love teaching, sharing with people and inspiring them. There is really no better feeling than when somebody’s face lights up as they start to understand these concepts, start to apply them to their lives and actually see what a difference it makes. 

What do people not know about you?

I think people will often look at me and think that what i’ve achieved or where I am has been easy. I think that’s a really common mistake that many people make when they are looking at somebody else’s life. They think, ‘oh it must have been easy for them’ or ‘oh it is because they have all these things’ and the truth of the matter is that it is not easy for any one of us. We all have our own internal battles that nobody else knows about or understands. You have to bring forth compassion for yourself and for others in those kinds of battles. We are all dealing with difficulties that we might not know. For example, I think that people will think that talking to others is easy for me because of my profession, without knowing that I was extremely introverted and socially awkward and anxious for pretty much my whole life. Or people will look at me and think wow it must be easy for you to lose weight or not be overweight when they might not know that I struggled with my weight for decades. So to me it is important to remember that literally all my current life is a result of growth and decisions I made to face fear over and over again. 

Diana is a fairly new member of the Hub. She began her membership in February and has begun to love the community she has grown into. She admits that joining was a new concept to her because she struggled with being socially awkward for so long and the Hub presented itself as a place where she felt comfortable interacting with people. 

She wanted to pair her workspace with an event space that she thought wanted to make a positive impact. The Hub, or Impact Hub Honolulu as it was known at the time did exactly that. It created a space for small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to basically build a dream. Diana adds that “it is a space to support what I do which involves a lot of helping people build dreams out of adversity and difficult times. It felt very much aligned and I have really enjoyed the events that I have had an opportunity to host there”. 

Her favorite thing about the Hub is the people. Everyone she has met at the Hub has been very nice and very open and she thinks that, it is just a wonderful way to learn about the different things that people do. There are so many people that get stuck in the nine-to-five office kind of job, and I think it is so fascinating to know people who are willing to step outside of that. I myself have done it but it is still so inspiring to be around people who are willing to let go of that nine-to-five and the 401K and those kinds of things in order to pursue something that they are passionate about”.

In true life coach fashion, Diana left the interview with this:  

“This is not the last crisis we are going to go through. From a standpoint of ‘this too shall pass’; this is not the last time we are going to go through something like this. Therefore I think it is important that everybody realizes that while ‘yes there is this and we are going to get through it’ there is at some point going to be another catastrophe and it is worthwhile to know how to handle crisis so that it doesn’t have to hurt next time, and it doesn’t have to be as painful. That way, they can turn it into something that really shapes you into the next evolution of you instead of having this time be something that shakes you to the core”.